With the recent sale of the Scorched Earth Xerath skin, I have noticed differences between the skin's on-release particles and the current ones.
In particular, as you can confirm in this video , his ultimate initially had four effects:
1) the orange beam descending from the sky
2) the spherical transparent blast that occurred when the beam hit the ground
3) a "lava splash" animation that played simultaneously with the blast animation
4) a "crater" mark that was left on the ground at the point of impact for a short time

However, right now only the two first particles seem to actually work. This has been confirmed to happen to other players as well (check the comments of the video) so it's not a problem with the graphics or hardware.
So the only obvious assumption that can be made is that the particles were removed.

So I want to ask, were they indeed removed by Riot? And if yes, why? Why would such a nice touch be removed, and leave the skin with less when it could have more?
Especially when a lot of players payed to get it, I feel like the effects should be restored if they were removed intentionally, or if it's a bug, it should be fixed.

i noticed it too

Loads of people noticed... there's a ton of comments in YouTube under the video i've cited here. But the thing is:
Was the removal intended by Riot, and if so, can we get the missing features back,
or is it a bug, and if so, when/will it be fixed?

The link was not working, i fixed it. (:
Does any of you guys see the full effect or the problem occurs to all of us?

If any RED sees this, please provide us with info if possible, i find it really disappointing that the skin isnt as awesome as it used to be...

Bump of agreement. I love this skin, too, and really want the full effect

The crater is definitely missing so a fix would be welcome as it's a rather good looking effect.

Not only the crater is missing... The lava splash effect is also removed, now it looks just like a red laser beam falling from the sky.
But it seems like no RED is gonna inform us about it... :/

Well, bump?

Heyo! Thanks for the heads up, guys. It is definitely a bug -- I'll look into fixing this up!