With its release in late 2009, League of Legends (Riot Games) has influenced the game industry in several profound ways. Known for its vast popularity and its pivotal role in pioneering live streaming and electronic sports, League of Legends is also noteworthy for its model of ‘fair’ free-to-play. Described by Riot Games and many industry professionals as ‘fair’ due to its lack of any ‘pay-to-win’ content (Graft, 2013; Nutt, 2014), this model of free-to-play has gone on to influence a paradigmatic shift towards ‘games as a service’. In this study, the model of ‘fair’ free-to-play is critically framed as a lucrative affective economy involving reciprocal gift exchanges between players and commercial games developers. Drawing on 49 qualitative Reddit responses from players who buy in-game skins, this study positions the microtransactions of League of Legends as a notable example of affective economics that is bound up in reciprocal forms of commercial exchange. Framing this hybrid model of co-creative relations alongside examples from game, fan and Internet studies, it is the critical aim of this study to frame the microtransactions of League of Legends as an instance of affective valorisation. Paralleling the affective economics of various digital platforms, it is the view of this study that microtransactions in games should be considered as part of the same political economy of the Internet.

英雄联盟（Riot Games）于2009年下半年发布，以多种深刻的方式影响了游戏行业。英雄联盟以其广泛的知名度和在现场直播和电子体育领域的先驱作用而闻名值得一提的是其“公平”免费游戏的模式。由于缺乏任何“赢钱”内容，Riot Games和许多行业专业人士将其描述为“公平”（Graft，2013； Nutt，2014），这种免费游戏模式继续影响着向“游戏即服务”的范式转变。在本研究中，“公平”免费游戏的模型被严格地构建为有利可图的情感经济，涉及玩家与商业游戏开发商之间的相互礼物交换。该研究借鉴了购买游戏皮肤的玩家的49个定性Reddit回应，该研究对《英雄联盟》的微交易进行了定位作为情感经济学的一个显着例子，它以互惠的商业交易形式捆绑在一起。将这种共同创造关系的混合模型与来自游戏，粉丝和互联网研究的例子一起构成框架，本研究的关键目标是将英雄联盟的微交易框架化为情感增值的一个实例。与各种数字平台的情感经济学平行，本研究认为，游戏中的微交易应被视为互联网同一政治经济学的一部分。