League of Legends Developer Announces Layoffs of 530 Employees, Citing Unsustainable Costs
Tencent Holdings’ Riot Games plans to lay off 530 employees, or about 11 percent of its workforce worldwide, the online game company said on Monday in its blog, which included CEO Dylan Jadeja’s letter to employees.
Los Angeles-based Riot, whose popular titles include “League of Legends,” said teams outside of core development will see the biggest impact from the layoffs.
Digital game publishers are struggling to grow because the public isn’t buying expensive games or staying with games less frequently amid high inflation. At the beginning of last year, Electronic Arts Inc. cut 6 percent of its staff and gave up some office space.
“Today, we are a company that lacks a sharp enough focus and, simply put, we have too many things going on. Some of the significant investments we have made are not paying off as expected. Our costs have grown to the point where they are unsustainable,” Jadeja said in the letter.
The changes will allow Riot to focus on its live games “League of Legends,” “Valorant,” “Teamfight Tactics” and “Wild Rift,” according to a separate blog by Jadeja and co-founder Marc Merrill.
Riot will stop developing new games under “Riot Forge” and divest some staff and features to “Legends of Runeterra”.
Tencent, which acquired a majority stake in Riot Games in 2011, also owns a stake in another US video game developer, Epic Games.
