Riot Games, the American developer and publisher behind insanely popular game series like league of legendsannounced today that it will cut 530 jobs across the entire company.
That equates to “about 11% of Rioters,” with teams “beyond core development” making the biggest impact. In a lengthy message on its official website, Riot explained how it wants to put the focus back on its games, which have the biggest impact on player experiences:
“The goal of the adjustments we’re making is to focus on the areas that have the biggest impact on your experience, while reducing investment in things that don’t.”
“We’re prioritizing these teams so they can focus on content, features, and updates that directly respond to what you’ve been looking for. Expect events, modes, and long-term plans that lead to a vibrant (hopefully decades-long) future for these games.”
Riot also reiterated its commitment to its ‘core live games’ including not only League of Legends but also Evaluation, Team fight tactics and A wild split. However, Legends of Runeterra will downsize its development team, and Riot’s publishing house ‘Riot Forge’ will cease development of new games, so that Riot can “refocus” its efforts.
Riot Forge was an experiment with indie developers to “let loose on Runeterra” and resulted in six titles spanning various game genres, regions and characters based on League of Legends. This also includes the release of these games on Switch.
“We are finishing development of a new game under Riot Forge after the upcoming release Bandle Tale: The story of League of Legends…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.”
Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is developed by Lazy Bear and will be coming to Switch next month. This news follows a recent report of massive layoffs in the industry in 2023, as well as Thunderful Group announcing a restructuring last week.
