Riot Games is cutting jobs from its League of Legends team. Marc Merrill, the studio’s co-founder, co-chairman and chief product officer, announced the cuts today on X. “This isn’t about reducing headcount to save money—it’s about making sure we have the right expertise so that League continues to be great for another 15 years and beyond,” Merrill said. A rep from Riot Games told Tech Reader that 32 jobs will be eliminated across the company in this move.
The spin seems to be that the developer is trying to reprioritize behind the scenes, especially with Merrill’s insistence that “we’re not slowing down work on the game you love” and that the team “will eventually be even larger than it is today as we develop the next phase of League.” He didn’t add any more details about what that new focus would be or which departments will bear the brunt of the cuts.
It’s a bold move for Riot to make now, especially since League of Legends is right in the middle of its much-viewed World Championships. We received confirmation that the esports team would not be impacted by the cuts. The company also downsized at the start of 2024, eliminating 11 percent of its global workforce. That move mostly impacted employees “outside of core development,” so the League of Legends team likely didn’t see any changes at that time. The company also separately announced in January that it would shutter the Riot Forge publishing project.
All these changes point toward a bigger picture of changing and narrowing focus for Riot. The company has tried a lot of new ideas since the explosive success of League of Legends; a first person team shooter, a mobile auto chess battler, a fighting game and an animated TV show, to name a few. But it seems like Riot’s time for experimentation may be ending.
