User blog comment:Lykrast/Runes: why I hate them/@comment-4881935-20140328142515

Here is my quick voice of opinion.

League of Legends is a free-to-play game that many people can agree is one of the best models out there. In theory, you literally can play this game and get everything you need without spending any money (though chances are high that you will spend money). In my four years of playing Lol, I have spent a total of 20 dollars plus receiving 20 dollars worth of RP as a present. Possible, but it's a slow climb.

Riot needs a lot of places for people to spend their IP so that people will want to spend RP to speed up the process. If they were to remove runes, or made it that you never needed to buy it, the only place to spend IP will be on champions... and ...rune pages (which has a small effective pool). I don't know about you but in my humble opinion, many people will hit the point of just saving IP very quickly and that will make Riot because people won't be spending RP on champions. That is a huge hit for them.

You may not like it, but Riot is a company and needs money.