Over the past few years, Riot has been releasing spin-off titles from their original baby League of Legends. Games like Ruined King, Convergence and Song of Nunu, have given gamers insight and a different way to enjoy the lore behind some of the League’s favourite characters.
However, even with one game, Bandle Tale, still set to launch this February, Riot has announced that they are officially closing down Riot Forge, the division behind all these single-player experiences.
In a blog post titled “An Important Update about Riot’s Future”, Dylan Jadeja, Riot CEO, explained all the details about why they would be shutting down the project, cutting back on Legends of Runeterra and, even worse so, why they must let go of around 11% of their global workforce.
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 – which is vital to a creative company like ours. All of this puts the core of our business at risk. – Jadeja
Ultimately, Jadeja says Riot went too hot out of the gate, and now they must reel things in a little. Sadly, this does mean that the employees feel the main brunt of Riot’s mistakes.
Laid-off employees will still receive a host of benefits, as laid out in the blog post, that includes six months of severance pay while they try to find their feet again in an industry that seems to be laying off more and more staff with each passing minute.
On the slightly more positive side of things, though, while Legends of Runeterra will be letting go of some of their staff and shifting their focus to PvE over PvP, Riot has promised to double down on their more major titles. League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift will see more events, focused updates and roadmaps that lead to brighter, “multi-decade” futures for these games.
Project L, the side-on fighting game similar to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, and Arcane Season 2 get special mention as some of the projects that Riot is working on in the backend that will maintain their backing from Riot R&D, as well as a few other projects that Riot is currently “cooking”.
Overall, a company having to let go of a percentage of staff as great as this is never a good thing to read about. Still, hopefully, with a more focused vision, in the long term, it will mean better games and better entertainment for us as gamers and for the gaming industry as a whole.