If I remember correctly, when Beemo came out he was like a surprise cause there was not PBE preview and he wasn't tested on PBE.
They said they were testing the waters with Beemo but I havent seen any other skins being released this way.
I really think Riot should do this more. I understand it is more difficult but imagine surprise skins only tested by themselves so they can surprise the community.
External link →We love doing this! AFAIK it requires a *lot* of additional internal testing to make 100% sure the skin doesn't cause weird issues, but it's definitely worth for certain things (like Odyssey and The Best Teemo Skin Beemo)
Thanks for replying to the post! Yes, I understand that everything like coming up with what you guys want out, to player reception, to bugs are really important, I really hope you guys can test out this idea again next season (or pre-season :o).
Honestly my first idea with the Riot Pls anniversary stream was that you guys where gonna pull a "Nintendo Direct" where they announce a bunch of games and they say "And they are gonna be available at the end of this livestream", and thinking about it, you guys did it with Legends of Runeterra haha. Back to my point, my first idea was say, keeping the "Annie-versary" skin a secret and then releasing her on the livestream.
Anyways, really cool execution on Odyssey and Beemo, and I really hope Riot explores this type of releases for future content.
Thanks for the reply too! Yeah, I forget which skin it was but a skin was released and had a weird bug that somehow affected a bunch of gameplay. Testing stuff without PBE costs hours of time that could be used for other player-facing things, so they try to keep it for special occasions (though the surprise Annie-versary would have been super dank, I agree). Theres a LOT of really exciting stuff rolling out in the next year, I think/hope you'll enjoy!
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