A dark day for many Riot Games employees. 530 people are losing their jobs at the company. CEO Dylan Jadeja explains why
It was a decision “that we hoped we would never have to make at Riot”. With these words, Dylan Jadeja begins a long blog entry. The CEO of the League of Legends developer talks about changing course and “changing the way we work across the company” in order to “lead Riot Games into a more sustainable future”.
What does not initially sound like a regrettable decision changes with the words that follow. Because the consequence of these changes is that “around 530 jobs worldwide” will be cut, “which would correspond to around eleven percent” of Riot employees. The “biggest impact will be on teams outside of core development.”
How did this happen?
In his entry, Jadeja describes that “we dove headfirst into expanding our portfolio”. Riot Games has grown rapidly, with the US company “expanding our global footprint, changing our operating model, hiring new talent” to “match our ambitions”.
Today, however, Riot Games is not “focused enough” – too many things are in the works. “Some of the significant investments we have made are not paying off as we expected. Our costs have risen so much that they are no longer sustainable. We have left ourselves no room for experimentation or failure – which is vital for a creative company like ours. All of this jeopardizes the core of our company,” explains Jadeja.
What next for the affected employees? Everyone whose “duties are eliminated” will be offered a severance package including a cash bonus, an additional payment to cover health benefits, gaming and wellness funds, retention of Riot stock, a laptop, six months of access to employment services, three months of additional access to the Rioter Assistance Program, visa support, and continued access to Riot email for “a limited time.”
What does the rate change mean?
In his statement, Jadeja explains that Legends of Runeterra (LoR) will be affected by the changes. The game had “not developed so well”. The costs for the development of LoR had been subsidized by other Riot games – this was “not a viable option at the moment”. Accordingly, the team will be downsized in order to shift the focus to the PvE game mode “Path of Champions”.
On the other hand, Riot Forge will be scrapped after the upcoming release of Bandle Tale. “Forge was our collaboration with external studios to develop smaller games in our IP,” said Jadeja, “but we don’t see this as core to our strategy going forward.” Although future collaboration with developers is not ruled out, it will be different. The company intends to provide more detailed information about its portfolio this year.
