The president of Riot Games announced to his employees on Monday that he planned to let go of 530 employees, a hard blow for the American subsidiary of Tencent, publisher of League of Legends.
This is a real blow for the Riot Games company. And it was not without difficulty that Dylan Jadeja, the company’s CEO, announced to his employees the turn that the publisher was going to take, which notably involves sidelining 11% of employees. 530 positions will be eliminated around the world, to restructure a company which has “ too much going on ”, according to his boss.
Layoffs at Riot, “a necessity” for its CEO
In around ten years, Riot Games, under 100% Chinese control (Tencent), had only published one game, the iconic League of Legends (LoL). Then the American company launched projects all over the place, with free-to-play Valorantthe car battler Teamfight Tacticsor the mobile version of LoL, Wild Rift.
Since 2019, Riot has experienced rapid growth and has launched many projects. But Dylan Jadeja can only see it, “ today we are a company without sufficiently precise direction (…). Some of the significant investments we have made are not yielding as much as we hoped “.
In other words, Riot is a company that was functioning but which doubled the size of its workforce around the Covid period, whose costs became unsustainable. In recent months, the publisher had already decided to freeze hiring and slow down on certain projects, but there was no greater savings to be made than by cutting back on its workforce. It is now done. “ It is a necessity », insists Jadeja, the CEO.
Riot is trying to deal with the departure of its employees
Riot’s development teams should not be affected by the layoffs, as the publisher wants to preserve the life of its online games. “ We prioritize these teams so they can focus on content, features, and updates » which respond to the wishes of the players.
The 530 employees invited to leave will receive compensation of a minimum of 6 months of salary, with a bonus for the year 2023. Riot is also offering them an additional $1,000 to cover additional expenses, as well as a laptop and support (CV, coaching and others) to find a job, for six months post-layoff, among other benefits.
Riot has finally explained its upcoming strategy for some of its games. Legends of Runeterra will see its development cost decrease, to focus more on the game’s PvE adventure mode, “The Path of Champions”. Riot Forge will also cease activity after the release of the crafting RGP Bandle Tale. After hacking the source code of LoL At the start of 2023, this is another particularly eventful start to the year for Riot!
Source : Riot Games
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