I wanted to test if premium skins actually improve your performance - or if they’re only cosmetic as Riot claims. Using data analysis, I broke down

Are League of Legends Skins Pay-To-Win?

submited by

Style Pass

2024-12-25 00:00:03

I wanted to test if premium skins actually improve your performance - or if they’re only cosmetic as Riot claims. Using data analysis, I broke down the numbers to find out. Along the journey, I reverse engineered the game's replay format and network protocol to collect the data.

Are League of Legends skins purely cosmetic, or do they provide subtle advantages that can impact gameplay? This question intrigued me, especially since over the summer, Riot released a $500 Ahri skin, and after Arcane Season 2, Riot released a $250 Jinx skin.

Since Riot’s official API doesn’t expose this data, I embarked on a technical journey to uncover the truth. This blog covers the reverse engineering process I used to extract and analyze the data, the challenges I faced, and the results I found.Technical AnalysisData Collection Challenges

To analyze the impact of skins on gameplay, I needed access to detailed match data, including which skins were used in each game. Since Riot’s API doesn’t provide this information, I had two options:Convince tons of players to use a third-party app (e.g., Overwolf).Download replay files and extract the data myself.