Riot cutting 530 jobs, closing Riot Forge
League of Legends maker Riot Games is laying off around 530 members of staff around the world.
In a blog post, CEO Dylan Jadeja and co-founder Marc Merrill said that this represented around 11 per cent of its global workforce.
"For most of our history, we’ve managed to avoid days like this, but this decision is critical for the future of Riot," the execs wrote.
"This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity. Over the past few years, as Riot more than doubled in headcount, we spread our efforts across more and more projects without sharp enough razors to decide what players needed most. The adjustments we're making aim to focus us on the areas that have the greatest impact on your experience while reducing investment on things that don’t."
Those laid off are being given a minimum of six months' pay, cash bonus of annual performance bonuses and health benefits on top of equity and staff's work computers.
Furthermore, Riot is closing down the Riot Forge publishing label after Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story comes out. This comes as the firm has opted to place focus on its live-service titles; the company is reducing the team working on Legends of Runeterra, too.
"Forge was an experiment to see what would happen when Rioters partnered with their favorite indie devs and let them loose on Runeterra with their unique viewpoints, styles, and expertise," the duo continued.
"Across six titles spanning different game genres, regions, and characters, it’s been inspiring to see what these devs created in partnership with the Forge team. We’re proud of what we’ve done together to bring these stories to life, but it’s time to refocus our efforts on the ambitious projects underway internally at Riot."
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