RIOT Games Refocusing Leads To Lay-Off of 530 Staff

Riot Games is an LA based company founded in 2006 best known for League of Legends and Valorant, two incredibly popular games that regularly hold strong player counts. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for the company, or it’s too much to be more accurate as they have announced some restructuring at the company.

Riot Games Restructuring

A news post was shared on riotgames.com which details an update to the company that has unfortunately led to the elimination of 530 roles within the company, about 11%. The reasoning for this is simply down to Riot wanting to refocus on “fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future”. Over the past few years, Riot has almost doubled in headcount which is an age old tale of “we grew too fast”. This means that the company has to make some choices in what areas are beneficial to their future, and what areas are not.

So, how will this effect the games that Riot creates? Well their big titles, League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, and Wild Rift will receive the most focus and will continue on as normal following a commitment to live service games. On the other hand, Legends of Runeterra and Riot Forge will be seeing the consequences here as neither were seen as financially viable. LoR had faced financial challenges since its launch costing more than it generates, so its team has been shrunk and the focus renewed into The Path of Champions which is where players spend the most time, more details available here. Riot Forge was an experimental games development program where Riot developers would work with Indie developers to produce various games. Unfortunately this is not something that the team can afford to continue so it is being shut down.

It’s unfortunate for such a large amount of job losses, 530 is no number to scoff at. The message which was sent to staff can be read here.