The crisis in the video game sector. It is the turn of the Riot Games studio to announce its layoff plan: 10% of the workforce finds itself unemployed.
After a period of over-hiring driven by very low interest rates and impressive growth during the confinement phases, the video game industry has decided to sweep away what it considers surplus. In turn, we see video game studios announcing phases of massive layoffs, in waves of hundreds of developers and employees. Even when it comes to studios making big profits.
This is the case again this Tuesday, January 23, 2024 with the announcement of a wave of layoffs at Riot Games. This video game studio, a subsidiary of the Chinese giant Tencent Games, is particularly known for the creation of League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics And Valorant. On its blog, the studio announces an 11% reduction in its workforce.
The end of Riot Forge
We find the same statement as for the waves of layoffs at other studios. A desire to reduce the number of projects to focus on a few high-potential developments and ensure the future of the studio. The blog article is primarily aimed at players in the Riot community. As a result, when the studio announced a reduction of 530 positions, it nevertheless promised that it was “ positions outside the core of our development teams “. Phew, we are reassured.
Officially, two studio projects will still be affected. The first is Legends of Runeterra. Its development cost would be much higher than the revenue generated and the development team will therefore be greatly reduced with a concentration of efforts on the ” the path of champions “.
The other victim of this cut in costs is Riot Forge, the part of Riot Games dedicated to the publishing of games developed by external studios. The game Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story will be the last to come from this structure. From now on, Riot Games’ projects will be focused on internal productions.
The CEO of Riot Games Dylan Jadeja insists, this decision is not motivated by a desire to please shareholders, that is to say Tencent Games, or to achieve a quarterly objective. It turns out that this is “a necessity” for Riot Games and the synchronization in the calendar with all the other studios that have pulled the same lever recently seems to be a coincidence.
The boss of the firm recalls “ As CEO, I am responsible for the changes we make and the direction we take for the future “. However, and contrary to what we have seen in Japanese studios, for example, Dylan Jadeja does not announce any consequences on his own level of remuneration.
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