Riot Games acquires a Wargaming studio to help with live game development

pcgamer.com:

In a move that it says will help «accelerate the development of live games,» League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that it is the proud new owner of Australian studio Wargaming Sydney(opens in new tab).

The studio was founded in 2002 as BigWorld Technology(opens in new tab), and gained fame as the creator of the BigWorld toolset used in more than 30 MMOs and online games. It was acquired by Wargaming in 2012 and worked on that company's military MMOs: World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes. Following this acquisition, it will be renamed again, to Riot Sydney, and will work to support League of Legends, Valorant, and Riot tech teams.

«We are really excited to bring these talented developers and teams to Riot,» Riot Games co-founder and president Marc Merrill said. «The Rioters that have had the opportunity to work with members of the Sydney team are confident not only in the tech they’ve built over the years but, more importantly, in the people who’ve built it. Naz (Naresh Hirani, Head of Development, Riot Sydney) and the dev teams at the studio have a long history of working in ways that will complement Riot’s ability to deliver value to our players and we really look forward to collaborating with them.»

Riot described its new Sydney operation as «one of the largest development studios in Australia.» Riot didn't specify how many employees it has, but it was said to be «home to over 100 developers» when Wargaming Sydney joined Australia's Interactive Games and Entertainment Association(opens in new tab) in 2019. It's a relatively small slice of Wargaming's pie, which according to LinkedIn(opens in new tab) has more than 5,500 employees spread across nearly a dozen studios around the