Riot Games to Lay Off 530 Workers

The ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Arcane’ studio is set to reduce staff as “a necessity,” and not to “appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number.”

Will the layoffs ever end? League of Legends and Arcane studio Riot Games is set to eliminate 530 roles within their global employee base, the company revealed on Monday. In the statement, the studio claims the drastic cut is “a necessity,” and not to “appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number.”

“Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway,” Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja wrote. “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.”

Moving forward, Riot Forge will be shuttered and the Legends of Runeterra team will be downsized “to move the game toward sustainability.” However, the company remains “as committed as ever to League PC, VALORANT, TFT, Wild Rift.”

“Our commitment to esports and entertainment in support of our games is also unchanged,” Jadeja continued. “The relationships we have with players are a real differentiator for us, so we’ll continue building the experiences in and around our games that have a meaningful impact on what it feels like to be a player.”

Other big names that recently announced layoffs include Epic Games, Pixar, Amazon, Unity, Starz, Netflix, DreamWorks, and others. What gives?

Source: Riot Games 

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