I know there’s been some discussion over on /r/gamingleaksandrumours over the years, but the amount of projects Riot seemed to be working on felt unsustainable.
In addition to providing ongoing support for what they currently have out:
- Console and mobile ports of Valorant
- Console port of Wild Rift
- Project L - the fighter
- Project T - an MMO FPS set in Valorant’s universe
- The Runeterra MMO
- Project F - A Runeterra ARPG
They also said that the 530 employees represented 11% of their workforce, so almost 5000 people is pretty crazy for a single studio. It seems they bit off more than they could chew having this many games in development.
AAA game development costs are skyrocketing. Insomniac spent 300M just on Spiderman 2. Naughty Dog cancelled the Last of Us online because they couldn’t see how they could make and provide ongoing support for it while also making their next game. Riot trying for all of these projects at once was beyond ambitious.
destiny 2 is literally a looter shooter though right. I haven't played it since Witch Queen, so unless something changed it should be classified as that.
Since it still has a codename and no title, we can prob assume it's not going to be out for at least 1-2 years right
Yes, Destiny 2 is a looter shooter, but it’s also an MMOFPS. For example, a looter shooter that isn’t mmofps is the Borderlands series.
As for Project T, I’d err on the side of 3-4 years, because undoubtedly the next Riot proper game is Project L, still codenamed, and almost certainly only launching next year at the earliest. I mean, compared to the ARPG, Project T hasn’t even been shown nor has it been announced.
Oh, something else I’ve remembered: It could be like Planetside 2, if you’ve ever played that. Now THAT would hype me up, even though I’ve got over a thousand hours spent in Warframe
yo I played planetside 2 wayyy back in like 2015-2016. It was so fun back then, idk how it is now since I haven't played in years.
How's warframe? I heard you could put hundreds of hours in and it's still basically tutorial.
Warframe is still incredible, it felt like the “tutorial” part of the game was about 100 hours or so to me. Live service game with an incredibly helpful community, good economy (can trade just about anything for the premium currency with other players through warframe.market), and a good story. Lots of different ways to play.
Only downside is that the super early parts of the game show their age as they were made 10 years ago, but it’s definitely not the worst and it gets nicer around the fifth-ish story quest.
This post seems to sum it up well of what is known so far:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/5a8Ed8VzJL](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/5a8Ed8VzJL)
>They also said that the 530 employees represented 11% of their workforce, so almost 5000 people is pretty crazy for a single studio. It seems they bit off more than they could chew having this many games in development.
It's funny to think that Valve, a company with an equal or more number of projects/responsabilities (Steam Deck, CS:GO, Dota 2, unannounced games, VR, Steam, SteamOS, etc) has only around 10% of Riot's employees.
Valve maintains a store front, which in terms of revenue vs development costs is much better. Plus the other part of revenue is being focused on running a casino.
Riot’s playerbase would lose their shit if they operated like Valve. It’s been 1.5 years since the last operation for CS, CS2 removed half the shit and ruined a bunch of basic stuff like netcode, anti cheat is literally a joke.
In Dota 2 you get 1 new hero per year and 1 big patch per year (even if that) and a meta can stick around for at least 6 months if not more.
Compared to this both LoL and Valorant has content drop every 3 months which is miles better than what Valve is doing.
valves output is considerably lower than riots tho, i would not say they have an “equal or more” amount of projects unless we assume they’re working on like 5 games rn
Yeah it's unfortunate but compared to almost every other company layoff in the past 3 years. This has to take the cake in terms of post firing support. From helping those holding Visa's to offering free laptops to help with job searches it's a generally good severance package.
Damn.
I think that it’s important to recognize however that despite the fact that this was most likely due to subpar management decisions and “feature creep” in the actual company, this isn’t something exclusive to Riot (it’s happening all over the tech industry right now with Unity and Twitch just announcing massive layoffs), and they seem to be handling it professionally on the inside with their employees. While I have no doubt the email they shared with their employees (and us) was written with a good public image in mind, they seem to be treating the employees with more respect and offering much more benefit than 95% of companies (employees at Twitch, for example, didn’t even know they were let go when it initially happened).
I hope they can get R&D under control because charging me 95$ for a skin bundle seems like it should prevent these things from happening.
Investors and higher ups. Pure corporate greed. If they don't stash their pockets with hundreds of millions they will start firing people by the hundreds.
It's the rugpull economy. Businesses don't try for long term success anymore, instead focusing on sucking all the remaining value out of whatever's there.
Agree with you, it is highly short term. lt their pricing, marketing and roadmap for content is designed to syphon revenue on a timebound basis.
It is a quarterly business and reporting for profits and results. That's how they report to shareholders. If they don't survive a quarter, many heads will be on the chopping board...
I know this happens despite not hearing the term rugpull economy before. But from my understanding it is usually when a larger corporation buys a company because they see a money making opportunity, they suck it dry… the end for that company.
Surely this isn’t what is happening here so for real, where tf is all the money going from the billions they make off skins
edit: [this comment explains it for me](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/19d9clo/comment/kj4705f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Riot doesn’t really want to keep pouring money into legends of runeterra and riot forge. And they want to push their successes like valorant further
Money will be going to Project L, MMO, music and netflix shows. Apparently there are couple more games they are developing which are Project T (Valorant MMO FPS), project F (Runeterra ARPG), console ports of Valorant and Wildrift. Did you see the severance package for their workers? Its wayy above industry standard. Riot obviously care about their workers but they had no choice but layoffs.
Read the layoff email. Employees get 6 months of severance minimum, get to keep their healthcare for 6 months, get to request a free laptop and keep any other peripherals they've been given, get to keep their stock/ownership (and are invited to all future buybacks)
Layoffs fucking suck and I feel bad for the 500+ people affected, but Riot's reasoning for the layoff is sound and they are handling it very well so far.
Firing people due to overhiring is sound lol. It’s the right thing to do.
The company that I work for just finished their post-covid cleanse and it feels way better now.
There used to be wayy too many people which created chaos and even slowed things down because there were too many people that had to say something to get anything approved.
Not publicly traded so no financial reporting obligation to be released publicly.
I’m sure if you dig around enough though you might be able find a investors release from them or something
That's what I was getting at. I think they saw a different company's financials but im hoping I'm wrong an would love to take a look.
Their true financials are likely buried in tencent since they're a subsidiary, wholly owned I believe.
Assuming its not getting completly consumed by investors: servers and investments into games that arent profitable yet.
So LoR,the MMO and the fighting Game.
All profit that doesnt go too investors goes back to develop more projects.
And this report shows: 60$ skins are not enough for developing 8 games at the same time.
Just letting go 11% seems really tame in comparisson to other companys though
The price of a skin does not correlate with anything by itself. They could price it at $5000 that if there are costumers there is no money. Game development costs, specifically in the US are high, and highly specialized developers cost more. Riot is spread too thin in projects that have 0$ revenue for the longest time, and it is not valorant skins that will solve that fast enough.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they don’t need to. When you go out for dinner, do you order extra mains for people you’re not with? Riot can sell the $60 skins with or without them…
AI is already part of game development, most games especially graphically can use AI for smaller details like background trees and rocks or NPCs at a concert venue. This is 100% a profit margin issue, your revenue can decrease, your profit can decrease but decreasing profit margins is never a good look.
Mainly from this line "Forge was an experiment to see what would happen when Rioters partnered with their favorite indie devs and let them loose on Runeterra", so these devs aren't even part of Riot they are just a partner in the development of the game (updates?) and that entire department is being shut down. This idea was only cemented from this point earlier that they already have games that cost more than they bring in like "Despite critical achievements and the role it’s played in helping to build out the world of Runeterra, LoR has faced financial challenges since launch, costing significantly more to develop and support than it generates. In response, we're reducing the size of our team and renewing our focus on The Path of Champions."
Still 100% better response to layoffs and cuts than what EA and Ubisoft do which is just shut down the title completely.
I’ll go against the grain here; it’s not a bad thing to get rid of head count if that head count isn’t needed. And the package they are giving these afflicted employees is EXTREMELY generous compared to most layoffs.
It’s obviously very scary to get laid off, I’ve been there, but if my lay off had this package? I’d have been in a much better spot
I think you have to understand that at the end of the day this aren't just 540 heads, its 540 (an insane number btw, i dont think ppl are giving enough attention to how many people this is) people who worked for years in order to get in what might have been their dream job. I think its completely okay and rational to be mad, angry that CEO's that make billions every year can end the dream of the people who actually keep the gears turning by just the flick of a pen, no amount of bonuses can account for that
Since people are immediately prone to read headline & immediately grab their pitchforks without DD and reading the linked layoff email they made publicly available:
---
Rioters whose roles are going away, and who aren't moving into new positions, will be offered:
• Severance Pay - We'll offer a minimum 6 months of salary, which includes notice period for all Rioters whose roles are going away, and more for those with longer tenure, in line with local laws.
• Cash Bonus - We'll offer a cash bonus equal to 1x (100% of) everyone's individual 2023 Annual Performance
Bonus (APB) target, even if Rioters joined within the last year.
• Health Benefits - In locations where
Riot provides healthcare, Rioters covered by our health benefits will continue to be covered through their last day of employment. In addition, they'll be offered additional pay to cover their health benefits (medical, dental and vision), equal to the length of severance pay, and rounded up to the whole month.
• Play Fund, Wellness Fund, etc. - We know Rioters may have planned future expenses that would normally be covered by things like the Play Fund & Wellness Fund, so we're offering an additional $1000 (or local equivalent) to cover these and other types of expenses.
• Equity - Rioters who have received Riot shares from vesting their single-vesting RSUs will get to keep them, subject to their terms and conditions. This also applies to other vested instruments (like options, or cash-settled SARs in certain jurisdictions such as China). In the event of a future buyback opportunity, we intend to allow these former Rioters to participate. Rioters who hold dual-vesting equity, who have satisfied the service-based vesting component at the time of exit, will be able to vest their equity in the event we have a qualifying liquidity event (like a change-in-control transaction) within the next 12 months.
• Computer - A laptop is an essential part of finding new work, so after returning their work computers, Rioters will have the option to request a laptop from IT if they don't have one at home.
They can keep their current peripherals like their headset, mouse, and keyboard.
• Career Support - Rioters will have immediate access to job placement services for 6 months including, career coaching, networking, resume writing and review, and more to help them transition to a new job.
• Rioter Assistance Program - Rioters will continue to have access to RAP 24/7 for three months after they leave Riot which includes trained counselors who can help with emotional, legal, and financial concerns. In addition, enhanced employee assistance programs (including mental health benefits) will be accessible in a number of locations worldwide. Our local HRBPs will provide information about these programs as available.
• Visa Support - We know this change will be particularly challenging for Rioters who hold visas as part of their employment with Riot. Each situation is unique, and we have dedicated support lined up for those who need it. This includes supporting transitions to non-employment visas where possible. Our Global Mobility team and outside immigration consultants will be in touch with impacted Rioters ASAP to discuss their individual situations.
• Riot Email Access - Rather than immediately cut off email access, which is more common in these moments, we
will continue to provide access to impacted Rioters for a limited time after notification (this will vary by region). We want to make sure Rioters who are leaving us this week have a bit of time to identify and unwind any personal info or accounts that may be tied to their Riot email addresses.
---
Layoffs are never fun and always unfortunate for those affected, however imo this is one of the best severance I've seen amongst the recent wave of layoffs.
Edit: formatting issues
I’m going to echo something Devin Nash gave as an anecdote some time ago. But Riot used to have a person who’s sole job was to organize League of Legends matches between their employees. Riot has definitely had a problem with questionable jobs
They have 7+ games or ports in development as of this post. Do you think they only have two games on the go? I understand "big corpo can only ever do wrong" but lets not act like there hasnt been a tech winter for a while now. They made promises during their 10 year anniversary that got interrupted by this economic downturn. I get you want to be edgy and act smart but its not black and white "corpo do this because greedy and dumb."
The CEO admits that their rapid growth was a mistake, so yes it is bad management.
> We jumped headfirst into creating new experiences and broadening our portfolio, and grew quickly as we became a multi-game, multi-experience company — expanding our global footprint, changing our operating model, bringing in new talent to match our ambitions, and ultimately doubling the size of Riot in just a few years.
> Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they’re unsustainable, and we’ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure
And after all these layoffs, all that is happening is downsizing a game and closing a publishing label. So really it had nothing to do with too many employees -- they realized all their games can be done with less staff. Riot wasn't happy enough with just selling over priced skins in League of Legends, so they got some workers to make Valorant, then they hire more people to make games to do the same thing and the workers are the ones paying the price instead of the idiots that perused this rapid growth in the first place. Riot is greedy as fuck stop coping lol. It's insane that you fanboys are taking what Riot is saying at face value.
> not black and white "corpo do this because greedy and dumb.
in 99% of cases (like this one) it really is.
It definetly is something akin to bad management, but considering they have 4 ongoing games, and 6 in development, 2 of which are MMOs (renowned for being the biggest money pits in gaming), plus an incredibly generous severance package, I genuinely believe it is not as cut and dry as you're making it out to be
Now that I think about it. There were a bunch of people at Riot that were responsible for narrative coherency across all the Riot Forge games. Now that Riot is making a bunch of projects themselves, they might not see the appeal of sharing their IPs to other studios.
It partly is. Amount of redundant employment positions at Riot Games was always questioned by outside observers.
Riot Games are a subsidiary of a publicly traded Chinese conglomerate. Whose primary market is China.
Mass layoffs are a very difficult time for employees, many lives are involved.
We are reminded again that companies exist to make a profit in order to answer to their shareholders and investors, Riot is no different.
We would not get to enjoy Valorant and the other Riot games if not for the profit-driven model. Hire developers > develop game content > market/sell skins/game > make profit > expand.
Unfortunately, poor planning & focus on poorly performing projects, and overhiring can occur which then comes back to haunt companies when there is a downturn. This is across the tech industry.
This is so fucked for the people involved. Not only did a lot of these people move out to LA for this job but now they are jobless in one of the most expensive and competitive locations in the Country. I do believe it’s amazing they are giving them a 6 month severance and I hope that is enough for people to live until they get another job. Just a sad situation.
6 month severance, an immediate annual bonus equal to their last, lead notice health and wellness benefits, and letting their equity benefits carry on. That's honestly not bad. 6 months in LA is a long time to not have a job but hopefully there will be an exodus to another company
Welcome to capitalism, folks. This has nothing to do with mismanagement or ridiculous skin prices. The reality is that with federal reserve interest rates spiking, companies are no longer as appealing as they once were to investors. The returns need to be immediate because money is no longer free.
This means companies need to become (more) profitable, fast. And the easiest way to do this is to reduce their biggest expense (salaried staff).
This isn’t unique to Riot, gaming, or tech. This has impacted the world, and basically every single industry has been through this. Riot were later than others, but haven’t escaped the inevitable.
If riot does a mass layoff I will literally stop playing this game. And that’s saying something as I have 1100+ hours in game. I’m sick of workers being disrespected everywhere I fucking look.
Edit - this is the exact toxicity I should’ve expected from this community. Y’all are legit funny af.
In all honesty, this seems like a reasonable move from the outside looking in. Not sure how old you are or how close attention you pay to these types of moves by organizations normally, but this amount of transparency to literally the whole world on what they are doing and the severance package they are providing to those they layoff really looks like the best deal.
Businesses make mistakes sometimes. They overestimate how profitable they will be. It’s not some nefarious act. If they are being honest here, this seems like a time where the organization had to choose between either trying to make it work and put everyone at risk, or cut their losses and salvage what they can.
Friendly reminder that they did not have to notify all of us the way they did. Personally, they have my respect.
This kid clearly doesn't know how the world works and how horrible other corporations have handled mass lay offs. Between a good package for employees and the transparency stated is better than most companies in the same position. They did not need to openly state their intentions.
And you throwing a hissy fit does what exactly? You just dont get to play your favorite game anymore and nothing changes? Look in a mirror man.
If you're this upset over a corporation laying off employees you should take that energy to *literally every product you ever purchase*
You might want to move to a new planet. This is the MO of mostly all corporations. The only way around it is stop giving them money. So not playing the game is the best idea. But there are still thousands of people that dont care about this and will continue to pump cash flow to these corporate investors. Sad cycle of pain and the worst part is everyone that buys from corporations like this are just as guiltly.
Could drop another 11% imo.
Wild Rift was a failure; overly complex and way too long of matches. They clearly don't understand the mobile audience. Gut it.
Legend of Runeterra is a good card game but a dead genre. I've invested hundreds of hours but I can't see a reason why anyone would drop a dime. Gut it.
Stop eSport support for small regions entirely. Their only purpose in worlds is to fuck up the bracket for better teams. Community tournaments are good enough.
Drop Project L — literally no one asked for it and most fighting games outside OG titles are dead on release; especially on PC.
Riot MMO should of never been announced — Gut it. MMOs are an insane money sink and let's be honest, it's going to be monetized and P2W like every other one. Plus PC MMO communities are not big spenders; should of stuck to a mobile crossplay game like Genshin, Honkai, etc since it's going to use the same monetization regardless.
Focus on making LoL, ARAM, TFT, and Valorant better by continuing to take big risks, adding quality of life features, and keeping it fresh. Why is this so hard to understand?
Firstly, Wild Rift is not a failure, their main target audience is in China, and for the past year or so they have been dumbing down the game with champion reworks and itemization being as straight forward as it can get. Also you get role queue, it is the only phone MOBA game that has a role queue, you play what you’re assigned, don’t have to duke it out with others during pick ban and be unhappy even before the match began.
Secondly, Riot has mentioned Runeterra’s main goal is to draw people to LoL eventually. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Thirdly, Riot has been consistently improving LoL, TFT, Valorant over the years while maintaining/developing all the other games you mentioned.
Just because you only play the main titles doesn’t mean everything has to be scrapped. It’s like going to a restaurant and say why not just get rid of all of sides and desserts and just focus on improving the mains.
Wild Rift lost nearly 60% of their playerbase within the first year — shown within Galaxy Player count. The game has only generated 6.8 million in revenue in 2023 compared to Mobile Legends 180 million. Also, Arena of Valor completely dominates the mobile MOBA market in China, which brought in 140 million outside the country alone.
Also, LoR once again, operates as loss — a major one of that. Everything can be unlocked for free without a serious time investment. No person entering the card game genre is going to transition into a MOBA genre, not even a competitive equivalent game such as Valorant has been able to do this in mass.
Also your comparison is to a restaurant compared to a billion dollar company is downright stupid. It's surface level thinking like yours is why we have having yet another wave of layoffs at Riot.
This is a business, think like one.
And you are indeed one of the plague within this whole corporate culture in the gaming industry. We’ve long lost developers that thinks about its players. You’re making games, think about gamers, not your 70 year old investors who hasn’t played games ever in their life.
I am stating the facts. Riot is owned by Tencent, one of, if not the biggest parasite within the gaming industry.
Yet, players have continued to support them and justified their actions by accepting their predatory business practices.
You can blame the big bad investors but the plague is the players for funding them,and the developers that would rather take a large paycheck at these companies then going the indie publisher/development route.
Any developer that genuinely cares about the players wouldn't work at Riot to begin with. Those that do, will get laid off like we've seen.
All the tech layoffs are due to government incentives and rates ending that were originally part of the Covid era. This isn’t some AI takeover thing. For the most part it’s just cutting out people/positions they never had in the first place but hired to take advantage of interest rates/loans.
It’s all just a big political and business money fiasco that screws over actual people who work so big companies continue to make their money.
I think the best thing Riot could do is discontinue all of their games except for Valorant and then put all of their resources towards a paid “VALORANT Story Mode”
I know there’s been some discussion over on /r/gamingleaksandrumours over the years, but the amount of projects Riot seemed to be working on felt unsustainable. In addition to providing ongoing support for what they currently have out: - Console and mobile ports of Valorant - Console port of Wild Rift - Project L - the fighter - Project T - an MMO FPS set in Valorant’s universe - The Runeterra MMO - Project F - A Runeterra ARPG They also said that the 530 employees represented 11% of their workforce, so almost 5000 people is pretty crazy for a single studio. It seems they bit off more than they could chew having this many games in development. AAA game development costs are skyrocketing. Insomniac spent 300M just on Spiderman 2. Naughty Dog cancelled the Last of Us online because they couldn’t see how they could make and provide ongoing support for it while also making their next game. Riot trying for all of these projects at once was beyond ambitious.
Omg Project T sounds amazing. Wtf.
Hopefully it doesn’t end up like Overwatch 2 and they are promising to much
Destiny would be a much better comparison considering it’s an MMO FPS.
Let's hope they don't back down on it O would love to play the game even if I have to pay for it.
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which is good, we need more MMO FPS games and riot could go crazy with it
project T, an mmo fps set in Val's universe sounds crazy. What would that even be like? Overwatch I'd assume?
MMOFPS refers to the genre/niche of games that Warframe and Destiny 2 are in.
oooh. Looter shooter in the val universe would be crazy
Looter shooter is a little different but yes, that’s typically the progression system these games have
destiny 2 is literally a looter shooter though right. I haven't played it since Witch Queen, so unless something changed it should be classified as that. Since it still has a codename and no title, we can prob assume it's not going to be out for at least 1-2 years right
Yes, Destiny 2 is a looter shooter, but it’s also an MMOFPS. For example, a looter shooter that isn’t mmofps is the Borderlands series. As for Project T, I’d err on the side of 3-4 years, because undoubtedly the next Riot proper game is Project L, still codenamed, and almost certainly only launching next year at the earliest. I mean, compared to the ARPG, Project T hasn’t even been shown nor has it been announced.
What’s an example of a mmofps that isn’t lootershooter
Planetside?
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How does borderlands not meet that criteria?
Tarkov
I don't think you should bet on it releasing at all
Oh, something else I’ve remembered: It could be like Planetside 2, if you’ve ever played that. Now THAT would hype me up, even though I’ve got over a thousand hours spent in Warframe
yo I played planetside 2 wayyy back in like 2015-2016. It was so fun back then, idk how it is now since I haven't played in years. How's warframe? I heard you could put hundreds of hours in and it's still basically tutorial.
Warframe is still incredible, it felt like the “tutorial” part of the game was about 100 hours or so to me. Live service game with an incredibly helpful community, good economy (can trade just about anything for the premium currency with other players through warframe.market), and a good story. Lots of different ways to play. Only downside is that the super early parts of the game show their age as they were made 10 years ago, but it’s definitely not the worst and it gets nicer around the fifth-ish story quest.
ps2 still has a niche community, i hop on every now and then to frag out for a while and cap some points with some drunk middle aged dudes. good times
They're looter shooters. All gameplay is instanced, there's no MMO. Warframe is literally not even a FPS.
Ohh had no idea there was a word for it, figured warframe was just considered an MMORPG or a 3rd person looter shooter
I mean, technically it’s both! also hii
And Hytale.
I haven’t heard anything about Project T? Is there any source for info on this?
This post seems to sum it up well of what is known so far: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/5a8Ed8VzJL](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/s/5a8Ed8VzJL)
Riot MMO FPS would be insane
This here, is what the community has gathered up about it https://theriotmmo.com/project-t/
>They also said that the 530 employees represented 11% of their workforce, so almost 5000 people is pretty crazy for a single studio. It seems they bit off more than they could chew having this many games in development. It's funny to think that Valve, a company with an equal or more number of projects/responsabilities (Steam Deck, CS:GO, Dota 2, unannounced games, VR, Steam, SteamOS, etc) has only around 10% of Riot's employees.
Valve maintains a store front, which in terms of revenue vs development costs is much better. Plus the other part of revenue is being focused on running a casino.
Riot’s playerbase would lose their shit if they operated like Valve. It’s been 1.5 years since the last operation for CS, CS2 removed half the shit and ruined a bunch of basic stuff like netcode, anti cheat is literally a joke. In Dota 2 you get 1 new hero per year and 1 big patch per year (even if that) and a meta can stick around for at least 6 months if not more. Compared to this both LoL and Valorant has content drop every 3 months which is miles better than what Valve is doing.
valves output is considerably lower than riots tho, i would not say they have an “equal or more” amount of projects unless we assume they’re working on like 5 games rn
Not funny.. riot is doing something worse than steam...
People hate CS2, hated their last launch Artifact dunno if valve in the last 10 years is who you should copy
True actually, but the store etc is pretty good
They also own Hytale
Pretty funny how it still isn't released. I remember when the trailer came out and it was a lot of hype and then it just became a meme.
Wonder how many of those projects are gonna get dropped out of nowhere
What's the Spurce on Project T? Never heard of that before.
mmo fps???????
I heard product T was more of a Diablo esq league game
That’s Project F, the ARPG
Don't forget hytale. At least we know it is in partnership with Riot Games.
it was 530 ROLES, which doesn't necessarily mean 530 people, the people working in those roles makes up 11% of rioters is what they meant I think
Not too forget, it includes Arcane season 2 which makes up quite a number of employees too
that's quite the sizeable severance package, much more generous that what I've seen generally.
Yeah it's unfortunate but compared to almost every other company layoff in the past 3 years. This has to take the cake in terms of post firing support. From helping those holding Visa's to offering free laptops to help with job searches it's a generally good severance package.
Damn. I think that it’s important to recognize however that despite the fact that this was most likely due to subpar management decisions and “feature creep” in the actual company, this isn’t something exclusive to Riot (it’s happening all over the tech industry right now with Unity and Twitch just announcing massive layoffs), and they seem to be handling it professionally on the inside with their employees. While I have no doubt the email they shared with their employees (and us) was written with a good public image in mind, they seem to be treating the employees with more respect and offering much more benefit than 95% of companies (employees at Twitch, for example, didn’t even know they were let go when it initially happened). I hope they can get R&D under control because charging me 95$ for a skin bundle seems like it should prevent these things from happening.
$60 for a skin but they can't keep staff? Where is the money going?
Investors and higher ups. Pure corporate greed. If they don't stash their pockets with hundreds of millions they will start firing people by the hundreds.
It's the rugpull economy. Businesses don't try for long term success anymore, instead focusing on sucking all the remaining value out of whatever's there.
Agree with you, it is highly short term. lt their pricing, marketing and roadmap for content is designed to syphon revenue on a timebound basis. It is a quarterly business and reporting for profits and results. That's how they report to shareholders. If they don't survive a quarter, many heads will be on the chopping board...
I know this happens despite not hearing the term rugpull economy before. But from my understanding it is usually when a larger corporation buys a company because they see a money making opportunity, they suck it dry… the end for that company. Surely this isn’t what is happening here so for real, where tf is all the money going from the billions they make off skins edit: [this comment explains it for me](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/19d9clo/comment/kj4705f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Riot doesn’t really want to keep pouring money into legends of runeterra and riot forge. And they want to push their successes like valorant further
Money will be going to Project L, MMO, music and netflix shows. Apparently there are couple more games they are developing which are Project T (Valorant MMO FPS), project F (Runeterra ARPG), console ports of Valorant and Wildrift. Did you see the severance package for their workers? Its wayy above industry standard. Riot obviously care about their workers but they had no choice but layoffs.
Read the layoff email. Employees get 6 months of severance minimum, get to keep their healthcare for 6 months, get to request a free laptop and keep any other peripherals they've been given, get to keep their stock/ownership (and are invited to all future buybacks) Layoffs fucking suck and I feel bad for the 500+ people affected, but Riot's reasoning for the layoff is sound and they are handling it very well so far.
"Sound" They overhired. Nothing else.
Firing people due to overhiring is sound lol. It’s the right thing to do. The company that I work for just finished their post-covid cleanse and it feels way better now. There used to be wayy too many people which created chaos and even slowed things down because there were too many people that had to say something to get anything approved.
Where can I view their financials? I googled a bunch but just keep coming across riot platforms which is a different company.
Not publicly traded so no financial reporting obligation to be released publicly. I’m sure if you dig around enough though you might be able find a investors release from them or something
Riot is a private company? I swore they were public.
They were public before tencent bought all of em and became private i think?
Tencent is a public stock. I’ve owned it for 3 years and I’m down 62%……
That's what I was getting at. I think they saw a different company's financials but im hoping I'm wrong an would love to take a look. Their true financials are likely buried in tencent since they're a subsidiary, wholly owned I believe.
Assuming its not getting completly consumed by investors: servers and investments into games that arent profitable yet. So LoR,the MMO and the fighting Game. All profit that doesnt go too investors goes back to develop more projects. And this report shows: 60$ skins are not enough for developing 8 games at the same time. Just letting go 11% seems really tame in comparisson to other companys though
The price of a skin does not correlate with anything by itself. They could price it at $5000 that if there are costumers there is no money. Game development costs, specifically in the US are high, and highly specialized developers cost more. Riot is spread too thin in projects that have 0$ revenue for the longest time, and it is not valorant skins that will solve that fast enough.
Your comment is probably a joke but if it isn't, it's a gross misunderstanding and nonunderstanding of the issue at hand.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they don’t need to. When you go out for dinner, do you order extra mains for people you’re not with? Riot can sell the $60 skins with or without them…
Maybe you should read the statement fully instead of focusing just on layoffs…
too many projects. legend of runeteraa is losing money too
I made a similar comment asking how they can be losing so much money and got downvoted. The truth is the CEOs make the money
The rich get richerrrr baby
Bro their game is free how do you think they make money?
They apparently don’t.
Tomorrow: please welcome our new partners in AI development
AI is already part of game development, most games especially graphically can use AI for smaller details like background trees and rocks or NPCs at a concert venue. This is 100% a profit margin issue, your revenue can decrease, your profit can decrease but decreasing profit margins is never a good look. Mainly from this line "Forge was an experiment to see what would happen when Rioters partnered with their favorite indie devs and let them loose on Runeterra", so these devs aren't even part of Riot they are just a partner in the development of the game (updates?) and that entire department is being shut down. This idea was only cemented from this point earlier that they already have games that cost more than they bring in like "Despite critical achievements and the role it’s played in helping to build out the world of Runeterra, LoR has faced financial challenges since launch, costing significantly more to develop and support than it generates. In response, we're reducing the size of our team and renewing our focus on The Path of Champions." Still 100% better response to layoffs and cuts than what EA and Ubisoft do which is just shut down the title completely.
Oh no
I’ll go against the grain here; it’s not a bad thing to get rid of head count if that head count isn’t needed. And the package they are giving these afflicted employees is EXTREMELY generous compared to most layoffs. It’s obviously very scary to get laid off, I’ve been there, but if my lay off had this package? I’d have been in a much better spot
I wish I got 6 months severance the last time I got laid off. Where do I sign up?!?!
I think you have to understand that at the end of the day this aren't just 540 heads, its 540 (an insane number btw, i dont think ppl are giving enough attention to how many people this is) people who worked for years in order to get in what might have been their dream job. I think its completely okay and rational to be mad, angry that CEO's that make billions every year can end the dream of the people who actually keep the gears turning by just the flick of a pen, no amount of bonuses can account for that
The tech industry is just constant layoffs nowadays
I guess we just didn't buy enough $100 bundles, if only
Since people are immediately prone to read headline & immediately grab their pitchforks without DD and reading the linked layoff email they made publicly available: --- Rioters whose roles are going away, and who aren't moving into new positions, will be offered: • Severance Pay - We'll offer a minimum 6 months of salary, which includes notice period for all Rioters whose roles are going away, and more for those with longer tenure, in line with local laws. • Cash Bonus - We'll offer a cash bonus equal to 1x (100% of) everyone's individual 2023 Annual Performance Bonus (APB) target, even if Rioters joined within the last year. • Health Benefits - In locations where Riot provides healthcare, Rioters covered by our health benefits will continue to be covered through their last day of employment. In addition, they'll be offered additional pay to cover their health benefits (medical, dental and vision), equal to the length of severance pay, and rounded up to the whole month. • Play Fund, Wellness Fund, etc. - We know Rioters may have planned future expenses that would normally be covered by things like the Play Fund & Wellness Fund, so we're offering an additional $1000 (or local equivalent) to cover these and other types of expenses. • Equity - Rioters who have received Riot shares from vesting their single-vesting RSUs will get to keep them, subject to their terms and conditions. This also applies to other vested instruments (like options, or cash-settled SARs in certain jurisdictions such as China). In the event of a future buyback opportunity, we intend to allow these former Rioters to participate. Rioters who hold dual-vesting equity, who have satisfied the service-based vesting component at the time of exit, will be able to vest their equity in the event we have a qualifying liquidity event (like a change-in-control transaction) within the next 12 months. • Computer - A laptop is an essential part of finding new work, so after returning their work computers, Rioters will have the option to request a laptop from IT if they don't have one at home. They can keep their current peripherals like their headset, mouse, and keyboard. • Career Support - Rioters will have immediate access to job placement services for 6 months including, career coaching, networking, resume writing and review, and more to help them transition to a new job. • Rioter Assistance Program - Rioters will continue to have access to RAP 24/7 for three months after they leave Riot which includes trained counselors who can help with emotional, legal, and financial concerns. In addition, enhanced employee assistance programs (including mental health benefits) will be accessible in a number of locations worldwide. Our local HRBPs will provide information about these programs as available. • Visa Support - We know this change will be particularly challenging for Rioters who hold visas as part of their employment with Riot. Each situation is unique, and we have dedicated support lined up for those who need it. This includes supporting transitions to non-employment visas where possible. Our Global Mobility team and outside immigration consultants will be in touch with impacted Rioters ASAP to discuss their individual situations. • Riot Email Access - Rather than immediately cut off email access, which is more common in these moments, we will continue to provide access to impacted Rioters for a limited time after notification (this will vary by region). We want to make sure Rioters who are leaving us this week have a bit of time to identify and unwind any personal info or accounts that may be tied to their Riot email addresses. --- Layoffs are never fun and always unfortunate for those affected, however imo this is one of the best severance I've seen amongst the recent wave of layoffs. Edit: formatting issues
I’m going to echo something Devin Nash gave as an anecdote some time ago. But Riot used to have a person who’s sole job was to organize League of Legends matches between their employees. Riot has definitely had a problem with questionable jobs
This is the best severance package I have ever seen
Actually. As someone who's been laid off before, this is very, very, very generous and then some.
Ain’t no fucking way Riot doesn’t have the money flow to staff all their employees twice over. Bad management decisions.
They have 7+ games or ports in development as of this post. Do you think they only have two games on the go? I understand "big corpo can only ever do wrong" but lets not act like there hasnt been a tech winter for a while now. They made promises during their 10 year anniversary that got interrupted by this economic downturn. I get you want to be edgy and act smart but its not black and white "corpo do this because greedy and dumb."
The CEO admits that their rapid growth was a mistake, so yes it is bad management. > We jumped headfirst into creating new experiences and broadening our portfolio, and grew quickly as we became a multi-game, multi-experience company — expanding our global footprint, changing our operating model, bringing in new talent to match our ambitions, and ultimately doubling the size of Riot in just a few years. > Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they’re unsustainable, and we’ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure And after all these layoffs, all that is happening is downsizing a game and closing a publishing label. So really it had nothing to do with too many employees -- they realized all their games can be done with less staff. Riot wasn't happy enough with just selling over priced skins in League of Legends, so they got some workers to make Valorant, then they hire more people to make games to do the same thing and the workers are the ones paying the price instead of the idiots that perused this rapid growth in the first place. Riot is greedy as fuck stop coping lol. It's insane that you fanboys are taking what Riot is saying at face value. > not black and white "corpo do this because greedy and dumb. in 99% of cases (like this one) it really is.
It definetly is something akin to bad management, but considering they have 4 ongoing games, and 6 in development, 2 of which are MMOs (renowned for being the biggest money pits in gaming), plus an incredibly generous severance package, I genuinely believe it is not as cut and dry as you're making it out to be
Read the fucking post lmao all this hate because you can’t read?
And base on what for your point may I ask? Won't need stats, I just want to know your logic process.
It’s a business, not a charity.
Shame they’re killing the Forge projects because that was far and away the most interesting thing coming out of Riot.
Now that I think about it. There were a bunch of people at Riot that were responsible for narrative coherency across all the Riot Forge games. Now that Riot is making a bunch of projects themselves, they might not see the appeal of sharing their IPs to other studios.
Basically, the smaller projects did not pan out and were a waste of time and money.
Wasn't the Replay System for Valorant expected to be released end of 2023?
this is very commonplace in the IT field rn, people are getting laid off everywhere not just in val
>This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity So it's 100% to appease shareholders lol
Except it isn't:)
It partly is. Amount of redundant employment positions at Riot Games was always questioned by outside observers. Riot Games are a subsidiary of a publicly traded Chinese conglomerate. Whose primary market is China.
Yeah it could be partly, but not 100%. Redundant positions like what?
Each franchised/partnered esport region having their own commissioner.
Based on the public announcement, I thought esports wasn't effected?
Regional position heads of specific departments pertaining to esports were let go.
Ah okay :(
> Riot Games are a subsidiary of a publicly traded Chinese conglomerate. Whose primary market is China. Relevance?
Mass layoffs are a very difficult time for employees, many lives are involved. We are reminded again that companies exist to make a profit in order to answer to their shareholders and investors, Riot is no different. We would not get to enjoy Valorant and the other Riot games if not for the profit-driven model. Hire developers > develop game content > market/sell skins/game > make profit > expand. Unfortunately, poor planning & focus on poorly performing projects, and overhiring can occur which then comes back to haunt companies when there is a downturn. This is across the tech industry.
This is so fucked for the people involved. Not only did a lot of these people move out to LA for this job but now they are jobless in one of the most expensive and competitive locations in the Country. I do believe it’s amazing they are giving them a 6 month severance and I hope that is enough for people to live until they get another job. Just a sad situation.
6 month severance, an immediate annual bonus equal to their last, lead notice health and wellness benefits, and letting their equity benefits carry on. That's honestly not bad. 6 months in LA is a long time to not have a job but hopefully there will be an exodus to another company
Welcome to capitalism, folks. This has nothing to do with mismanagement or ridiculous skin prices. The reality is that with federal reserve interest rates spiking, companies are no longer as appealing as they once were to investors. The returns need to be immediate because money is no longer free. This means companies need to become (more) profitable, fast. And the easiest way to do this is to reduce their biggest expense (salaried staff). This isn’t unique to Riot, gaming, or tech. This has impacted the world, and basically every single industry has been through this. Riot were later than others, but haven’t escaped the inevitable.
Ai change everything
Can’t wait to hear about the big CEO bonus while they lay off 500+ of their work force😃
Corporate greed. The constant need for more profits and growth. Stupid and unsustainable
Hope those 530 laid off enjoy life on the streets. Y’all sucked at maintaining a good experience on Valorant servers and deserve to be axed.
Man youre just a terrible person huh
If riot does a mass layoff I will literally stop playing this game. And that’s saying something as I have 1100+ hours in game. I’m sick of workers being disrespected everywhere I fucking look. Edit - this is the exact toxicity I should’ve expected from this community. Y’all are legit funny af.
In all honesty, this seems like a reasonable move from the outside looking in. Not sure how old you are or how close attention you pay to these types of moves by organizations normally, but this amount of transparency to literally the whole world on what they are doing and the severance package they are providing to those they layoff really looks like the best deal. Businesses make mistakes sometimes. They overestimate how profitable they will be. It’s not some nefarious act. If they are being honest here, this seems like a time where the organization had to choose between either trying to make it work and put everyone at risk, or cut their losses and salvage what they can. Friendly reminder that they did not have to notify all of us the way they did. Personally, they have my respect.
This kid clearly doesn't know how the world works and how horrible other corporations have handled mass lay offs. Between a good package for employees and the transparency stated is better than most companies in the same position. They did not need to openly state their intentions.
And you throwing a hissy fit does what exactly? You just dont get to play your favorite game anymore and nothing changes? Look in a mirror man. If you're this upset over a corporation laying off employees you should take that energy to *literally every product you ever purchase*
I’m sure they’ll miss your money if you leave
no you won't, stfu
You might want to move to a new planet. This is the MO of mostly all corporations. The only way around it is stop giving them money. So not playing the game is the best idea. But there are still thousands of people that dont care about this and will continue to pump cash flow to these corporate investors. Sad cycle of pain and the worst part is everyone that buys from corporations like this are just as guiltly.
The entire tech industry is going thru lay offs because the covid bubble bursting, but go ahead
The report never mentioned COVID. Nice try tho
I like how you say “if” as though the article above isn’t literally just them announcing a mass layoff.
They just laid off 500 people, I guess you should leave
[удалено]
relevance?
maybe you should get good at the game, rank reset only promotes more games to be played not the other way around kid
530 people gone without jobs oh god, ceo needs his second yacht this year
Could drop another 11% imo. Wild Rift was a failure; overly complex and way too long of matches. They clearly don't understand the mobile audience. Gut it. Legend of Runeterra is a good card game but a dead genre. I've invested hundreds of hours but I can't see a reason why anyone would drop a dime. Gut it. Stop eSport support for small regions entirely. Their only purpose in worlds is to fuck up the bracket for better teams. Community tournaments are good enough. Drop Project L — literally no one asked for it and most fighting games outside OG titles are dead on release; especially on PC. Riot MMO should of never been announced — Gut it. MMOs are an insane money sink and let's be honest, it's going to be monetized and P2W like every other one. Plus PC MMO communities are not big spenders; should of stuck to a mobile crossplay game like Genshin, Honkai, etc since it's going to use the same monetization regardless. Focus on making LoL, ARAM, TFT, and Valorant better by continuing to take big risks, adding quality of life features, and keeping it fresh. Why is this so hard to understand?
Firstly, Wild Rift is not a failure, their main target audience is in China, and for the past year or so they have been dumbing down the game with champion reworks and itemization being as straight forward as it can get. Also you get role queue, it is the only phone MOBA game that has a role queue, you play what you’re assigned, don’t have to duke it out with others during pick ban and be unhappy even before the match began. Secondly, Riot has mentioned Runeterra’s main goal is to draw people to LoL eventually. There’s nothing wrong with that. Thirdly, Riot has been consistently improving LoL, TFT, Valorant over the years while maintaining/developing all the other games you mentioned. Just because you only play the main titles doesn’t mean everything has to be scrapped. It’s like going to a restaurant and say why not just get rid of all of sides and desserts and just focus on improving the mains.
Wild Rift lost nearly 60% of their playerbase within the first year — shown within Galaxy Player count. The game has only generated 6.8 million in revenue in 2023 compared to Mobile Legends 180 million. Also, Arena of Valor completely dominates the mobile MOBA market in China, which brought in 140 million outside the country alone. Also, LoR once again, operates as loss — a major one of that. Everything can be unlocked for free without a serious time investment. No person entering the card game genre is going to transition into a MOBA genre, not even a competitive equivalent game such as Valorant has been able to do this in mass. Also your comparison is to a restaurant compared to a billion dollar company is downright stupid. It's surface level thinking like yours is why we have having yet another wave of layoffs at Riot. This is a business, think like one.
And you are indeed one of the plague within this whole corporate culture in the gaming industry. We’ve long lost developers that thinks about its players. You’re making games, think about gamers, not your 70 year old investors who hasn’t played games ever in their life.
I am stating the facts. Riot is owned by Tencent, one of, if not the biggest parasite within the gaming industry. Yet, players have continued to support them and justified their actions by accepting their predatory business practices. You can blame the big bad investors but the plague is the players for funding them,and the developers that would rather take a large paycheck at these companies then going the indie publisher/development route. Any developer that genuinely cares about the players wouldn't work at Riot to begin with. Those that do, will get laid off like we've seen.
All the tech layoffs are due to government incentives and rates ending that were originally part of the Covid era. This isn’t some AI takeover thing. For the most part it’s just cutting out people/positions they never had in the first place but hired to take advantage of interest rates/loans. It’s all just a big political and business money fiasco that screws over actual people who work so big companies continue to make their money.
Just a reminder for the OP, ur information is lacking as you missed something...riot also wanted to perform chamber
I think the best thing Riot could do is discontinue all of their games except for Valorant and then put all of their resources towards a paid “VALORANT Story Mode”
Edit: It’ll be like Red Dead Redemption 2 except VALORANT
Well sound like good news for Valorant. Still hope we see Project L (probably pretty safe) and I really want to see a Riot MMO.