After more than 9,000 layoffs occurred in the video game industry last year, 2024 continues the trend and League of Legends The manufacturer Riot Games is the latest example. On Monday night, the company announced that “we are refocusing on fewer high-impact projects to move toward a more sustainable future,” which means eliminating roles for 530 people worldwide, or about 11 percent of its total workforce.
Legends of Runeterra and Riot Forge cuts are part of 'tweaks'
“Some of the significant investments we have made are not paying off as we expected,” said CEO Dylan Jadeja. he said in a message to the entire companyin reference to Riot's 10th anniversary expansions in 2019 that spread the League of Legends universe through new games and other forms of entertainment. For employees “whose role is or may be affected”, there will be a meeting with their relevant leaders within the next 48 hours and a minimum of six months of redundancy pay will be offered, with more for those who have been with the company for longer. as well as other benefits.
What Riot says it is prioritizing are the major live games it creates, such as League of Legends, Valorant, Team Fighting Tactics, and wild crack, as well as electronic sports and events linked to those titles. Similarly, the 2D fighting game Project L, still in development, with League The characters are said to be “making great progress” and the second season of their Arcane The Netflix TV show is on track to come out in November.
Projects directly affected by the changes include Legends of Runeterra, the free-to-play card game announced in 2019 that Jadeja said “hasn't worked as well as we needed it to.” That team is being reduced and focused on the PvE game mode. The other target in Riot's current game portfolio is the Riot Forge publishing label, also announced in 2019, to partner with smaller studios that would create more League-related titles.
According to Jadeja, the cuts are not intended to appease investors, but rather “we need to do more to focus our business and focus our efforts on the things that generate the most value for players: the things that are truly worth players' time. players. “However, that will not reverse the impact on those directly affected nor the chill spreading throughout the industry: a layoff tracker maintained by My city Note that 3,800 jobs have already been lost in 2024, and we are still in January.
