League of Legends’ latest free battle pass skin is just a recolor, and fans are pissed

Now that the next battle pass theme in League of Legends has been unveiled, fans are investigating the similarities between the free Alistar skin and his base design.

The skins, which were just revealed on League’s official X account, are centered around the fighting pits of Noxus. Each champion is decked out in metallic fighting gear, but keen viewers quickly spotted something strange about the Alistar skin included with the batch. One internet sleuth created a comparison on Reddit, showcasing that this “new” battle pass skin is just an HD recolor of Alistar’s base skin.

While throwing a giant purple bull into a Noxian fighting pit certainly makes for a compelling idea, it looks like the developers behind the cosmetics weren’t interested in turning it into a reality. Instead, this free skin just features Alistar’s base model slightly recolored with red hair, a purple tank top, and darker muscles.

Fans in the thread who viewed the comparison were quick to throw the developers under the bus, with one fan reminding users that ” thelast time we got a simple base skin retexture as a new skin, with no model changes, was Enchanted Galio in August 2010.” Typically, all skins feature at least some tweaks on base models to make them stand out. This became a norm within the League community as the game developed and became more successful, so seeing this happen in 2025 is very disconcerting.

Most Alistar skins change the shape of his horns to match the aesthetic of the skin line. Even the free Unchained Alistar skin, which was given out to players who followed League on YouTube several years ago, had larger horns and unique, spiked gauntlets. “The artist layoffs have been really obvious ever since they happened,” one user commented after looking at the comparison photos.

While it’s unclear how the massive layoffs at Riot Games have affected development of League, we do know that members of the art and cosmetic departments were let go just last year. Now that these battle pass skins are releasing recolors, fans of the game are pointing to the layoffs as a potential cause.

To make matters worse, Alistar is one of the multiple League champions who only receive skins every couple of years. Both the community and the developers keep track of which champions get skins, with more marketable and profitable champions receiving multiple per year. Unfortunately, it looks like this recolor is going to count towards Alistar’s skin total, meaning he might not get another skin for quite some time.

“Considering the insanely low effort put into the battle passes,” one user commented in the thread, “I hope everybody votes with their wallets every time a new one releases.” Unfortunately, some companies don’t always immediately listen to complaints from their users. To fight against these changes, some gamers are planning to band together by boycotting these cosmetics to try and get the company’s attention.

This low-quality skin controversy comes on the heels of a hard time for Riot, as the company is still in hot water with fans after removing Hextech chests from the game. It looks like the developers behind League will have to batten down the hatches, as the storm of complaints will only get stronger after this battle pass releases.