Jan 23, 2024

Game developer and "Arcane" producer Riot Games lays off 530 employees

In a gloomy start to the year for workers, mega-developer Riot Games announced that it will lay off 530 employees, or 11% of its worldwide workforce. According to a company blog post, the layoffs are "critical to Riot's future. [The company is owned by Chinese media conglomerate Tencent, best known as the developer of "League of Legends" and producer of the Emmy Award-winning Netflix animated series "Arcane." The company's other popular titles include "Teamfight Tactics," "Legends of Runeterra," and "Valorant."

According to a letter from Riot CEO Dylan Jadeja to employees, most of the job cuts will take place outside of Riot's core development team. Especially hard hit will be the League of Legends card game Legends of Runeterra and the Riot Forge publishing division, which works with indie developers to create games in the League of Legends universe. According to the article, Riot Forge will shut down completely after the release of the next and final game, Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story

In his letter, Jadeja writes that Riot is trying to do too much and that the scope of its efforts He writes: "We need to focus more on business and concentrate our efforts on the things that add the most value to our players, the things that are worth their time."

"We have a lot of work to do."

"We need to focus on the things that are worth our players' time," he writes.

"I want to be very clear: this is absolutely the last thing we wanted to do. Decisions like this have a huge impact on people's lives and on Riot's culture. We are not doing this to appease shareholders or to achieve quarterly revenue numbers. It's about maintaining a long-term focus for our players."

Jadeja's letter was thorough and included extensive details regarding severance packages offered to departing employees. Benefits offered to terminated employees include, but are not limited to: