Yikes.
Riot Games layoffs are the latest to impact workers in the video game industry, with 530 said to be losing their jobs in the move.
Overall, the layoffs at Riot will impact 11% of the organisation’s workforce.
In two statements — one to players, and the other to “Rioters”, CEO Dylan Jadeja and co-chairman Marc Merrill explained why the layoffs were taking place.
“We are refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future,” the pair wrote, seemingly blaming overextension.
“For most of our history, we’ve managed to avoid days like this, but this decision is critical for the future of Riot. This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity,” they wrote. “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.”
To “Rioters” — aka current and former staff — the message was solely attributed to CEO Dylan Jadeja.
“We’re changing some of the bets we’ve made and shifting how we work across the company to create focus and move us toward a more sustainable future,” he wrote. “This decision means we’re eliminating about 530 roles globally, which represents around 11% of our workforce, with the biggest impact to teams outside of core development. This also sadly means we’ll be saying goodbye to many talented colleagues and friends across all areas of Riot.”
Those who’ve lost their jobs will receive a minimum six months of salary and health benefits, a cash bonus “equal to 1x (100% of) everyone’s individual 2023 Annual Performance Bonus (APB) target”, a computer if one is needed, career support, and more.
As a result of the layoffs, Riot will also be shutting down its Riot Forge publishing label and “making changes to move [Legends of Runeterra] toward sustainability”.
More than an estimated 10,000 layoffs have rocked the gaming industry over the last year and a half, impacing developers and publishers including Thunderful, Embracer and Gearbox, Twitch (again), Unity, Codemasters, 505 Games’ Digital Bros, Amazon, Bungie, Media Molecule, Ubisoft, Aussie studio League of Geeks, Versus Evil and many more.
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