Arcane may have been a Netflix hit, but Riot spent a lot more money on it than it got paid for, or made from.

Whether you care or not League of Legendsthe effect is hard to deny Arkan – the animated series inspired by the world and characters of the game – has been on the streaming world.

Arcane was once summoned the most expensive animated series of all timewith its two seasons spending more than $250 million for production and marketing. If that figure is big, that's because it is. Beyond that, though, it's way beyond what everyone else involved has paid Riot for.

That's because Riot spent a lot of its own money on producing the show, and according to a new one Bloomberg report, the production ran over budget. Although some rumors say that there were several seasons in the works, the truth is that it is Arcane's second season will be its lastand it seems to have a lot to do with those production costs.

The budget news is especially brutal because Netflix pays Riot about $3 million per episode, and parent company Tencent paid $3 million to air the show in China. All told, that's less than half of the show's total costs.

The report also revealed that while Riot had ambitious plans to turn itself into a media giant with the help of Arcane, the studio did not have a solid plan to recoup the costs of the show before it aired. A Riot spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that Arcane wasn't profitable on its own, but it helped the business in other ways. They also said the second season is “on track to at least break even for us financially.”

It is important to remember that, unlike most projects of this type, Arcane was funded, developed and produced by Riot. The studio wanted full control over the IP and production, so it didn't follow the easier (and more profitable) licensing model. That also makes Riot's decision to stop their other entertainment projects in development, and stop working on Arcane itself, make sense.

More interesting than the raw figures, Arcane reportedly failed to bring enough new players into League of Legends, or get existing ones to spend more on the game. Part of that was caused by the limited window the show's creators gave Riot designers to create in-game skins and themed events around (an issue the studio solved with the second season), but it has a lot also to do with their complex nature. of the game which deterred many of the new players who signed up after the first season went up.

For now, it is unlikely that Arcane will be followed by any other shows inspired by the world of League of Legends.