Arcane was a huge hit for Netflix and Riot Games – an unabashed critical darling that was widely praised by League of Legends fans and elsewhere – but it didn’t come cheap.

Variety revealed some pretty jaw-dropping numbers in a new report on Wednesday about why Riot’s expansion into film and television has been slowed despite the success of Arcane. A lot of this has to do with budget; According to Variety’s sources, the two seasons of “Arcane” cost $250 million to produce and market. That’s a huge change for 18 episodes.

Riot co-founder and chief product officer Marc Merrill declined to confirm the whopping $250 million figure when speaking to Variety, but stood by the results.

“We are more than pleased with the expenses it took to put on a show worthy of our players’ time,” Merrill said.

As Variety points out, this makes it by far the most expensive animated series of all time. It might also at least partially explain why we only get two seasons. When Netflix first announced in June that “Arcane” would end with Season 2, co-creator Christian Linke pointed to story reasons, saying, “Ever since we started working on this project, we had a very specific one End in mind, namely the story.” of Arcane concludes this second season. Linke also teased that the team was planning more stories set in Runeterra.

The report contains a few other interesting anecdotes, including the fact that Riot had apparently recruited Marvel stars Joe and Anthony Russo to develop a feature film set in the League of Legends universe. However, Riot’s inexperience in Hollywood deals – a key point of the article – led to the developer losing $5 million, but the Russos walked away due to disagreements over the script. That’s an expensive creative difference.

The second season of Arcane will be released in three acts, like the first season, with episodes releasing on November 9th, 16th and 23rd. We thought there was a huge budget in the first season, which we rated 10/10. “Arcane is the first video game adaptation that is truly a masterpiece and breaks new ground for what is possible in TV animation,” we wrote at the time.

Alex Stedman is a senior news editor at IGN and leads entertainment coverage. When she’s not writing or editing, she reads fantasy novels or plays Dungeons & Dragons.