Tencent Holdings’ video game developer Riot Games announced it is laying off 530 employees, about 11% of its global workforce. Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja explained in a message to staff that the company’s costs have grown too high and are not financially sustainable.
The layoffs will disproportionately impact teams that are not directly involved in core video game development, such as League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, and Wild Rift. Riot Games intends to sharpen its focus on these existing major game titles.
Riot Games is the latest video game company to cut jobs amid industry-wide slowdowns. In 2023, gaming divisions at Amazon and ByteDance laid off workers, as did prominent gaming studios Epic Games, Ubisoft, and Niantic. The gaming industry hired aggressively during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, but sales have slowed as lockdowns ended and economic conditions worsened.
In his message, Jadeja acknowledged Riot Games “more than doubled in headcount” in recent years. He said the company currently lacks a clear enough focus and has too many projects underway. As a result, Riot Games will cease development on new games under its Riot Forge label and will scale back some features for Legends of Runeterra, a game that has undershot performance expectations.
Chinese tech giant Tencent bought a majority stake in Riot Games back in 2011. Tencent also holds a stake in Epic Games.
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