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Yet another big game developer announced a major reduction in its workforce today. This time, it’s Riot Games, the Tencent-owned developer best known for their MOBA title League of Legends and more recently its first-person shooter Valorant.
In a blog post today, Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja and President Marc Merrill stated that 530 team members will be cut, or about 11 percent of its total number of employees. In a separate post, Jadeja stated that the affected team members will get at least six months of severance pay, an extra cash bonus equal to their 2023 performance bonus, and more.
Riot Games will now concentrate development on its main titles, including League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, and Wild Rift. Another game, Legends of Runeterra, will have its development team cut down and will now concentrate on The Path of Champions gameplay mode. The team’s director, Dave Guskin, will also depart from Legends of Runeterra, although he will remain at Riot Games.
The company will also end its Riot Forge publishing efforts, which supported small indie developers making games set in the League of Legends universe.
Riot Games is still working on new titles, including the one with the code-name “Project L” which will be a 2v2-based fighting game. Riot says more info on that game is coming later in 2024.
This is just the latest in a series of big layoffs from tech companies in general in January 2024, and gaming businesses in particular. They have included cuts totaling 17 percent of the workforce at the gaming-themed chat service Discord, and Amazon cutting 35 percent of its team members at Twitch.
The Embracer Group recently cut a large number of employees from Lost Boys Interactive, and the game engine company Unity revealed it will reduce its workforce by 25 percent by the end of March.
