Riot Games Is Laying Off 11% Of Its Staff, Approximately 530 Developers Affected

Riot Games has announced that it will layoff 11% of its staff, or about 530 people, in a blog post published on Monday.

The post titled “Changes At Riot And The Road Ahead” cited that the layoff comes as a result of the studio “refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future.”

Which is the same refrain that’s been repeated by companies across the games industry. Discord’s own CEO gave the same reason for the messaging service cutting 17% of staff.

The post was penned by Riot’s current chief executive officer Dylan Jadeja and one of its co-founders, Marc Merrill.

“For most of our history, we’ve managed to avoid days like this, but this decision is critical for the future of Riot,” wrote Jadeja and Merrill.

“This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number – it’s a necessity. Over the past few years, as Riot doubled in headcount, we spread our efforts across more and more projects without sharp enough razors to decide what players needed most.

The adjustments we’re making aim to focus on on the areas that have the greatest impact on your experience while reducing investment on things that don’t.

This means we’re eliminating about 530 roles globally, which represents around 11% of Rioters, with the biggest impact to teams outside core development.

We recognize that many of you don’t just care about the games you play, but also about the people who make them. These are not just organizational changes; they affect individuals and families, and we do our best to approach these decisions with respect and sensitivity.”

Merrill and Jadeja also shared the email that was sent to employees, which outlines a minimum of 6 months in severance pay, a cash bonus to all those effected, even if they’ve only been with the company less than a year.

They’ll also be offered career support, visa support, a laptop if they want one, bonus payment the entire period of severance pay to cover health issues.

They also won’t be immediately cut off from email access, and will have some time to get their things in order.

The two Riot heads also outlined that Riot’s focus going forward will remain on its major titles, Valorant, League Of Legends, Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift.

However that doesn’t mean we won’t see new things from Riot, the post singled out a coming Project L that’ll be unveiled soon, and teased more projects in the research and development phase.

They did stress though that Riot will never be the publisher with a huge swath of releases.

“Our volume of releases will never be massive. We want everything we deliver to be something that you can be proud of and excited to share with friends.

That requires having financial flexibility to be able to take the time to make things that are truly great for players.

We know we’ll still have occasional misses, but we want those misses to be for the right reasons, not because we prioritized the wrong things or had to rush projects out the door before they were ready.”

Merrill and Jadeja also announced that its new game development arm Riot Forge is being shut down following the release of Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story.

Riot Forge was the source of six different League Of Legends spin-off titles, were Riot partnered with indie studios to find new takes on the League of Legends universe.

“We’re proud of what we’ve done together to bring these stories to life, but it’s time to refocus our efforts on the ambitious projects underway internally at Riot.”

Ending the blog post, Merrill and Jadeja spoke to players, reassuring them that “we’re honing in on what we do best and what resonates most with you.”

2024 has barely begun, and the games industry is well on its way to out-pacing last years seemingly endless layoffs.

What’s worse, is that industry leader’s don’t see an end in sight, at least for two years.

Hopefully all those effected are able to land on their feet soon.

Source – [Riot Games]