rear Last year, there were more than 9,000 layoffs in the video game industry.this trend will continue in 2024. league of legends Manufacturer Riot Games is the latest example. monday night, the company announced „We are refocusing on fewer high-impact projects towards a more sustainable future.“ This means cutting 530 roles globally, or about 11 percent of its workforce.
Legends of Runeterra and Riot Forge cuts are part of “Adjustment”
CEO Dylan Jadeja stated in a company-wide message„Some of the significant investments we have made have not performed as well as we had hoped,“ he noted. Riot 10th Anniversary Expansion in 2019 who spread it league of legends Introducing a universe of new games and other forms of entertainment. Employees whose „roles have been or may be affected“ will be interviewed by relevant leaders within the next 48 hours and offered a minimum of six months of severance. Employees with longer service years will receive even more severance pay. Other benefits are similar.
What Riot says it's prioritizing is the core live games it creates. League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, and wild rift, including esports and events related to those titles. Similarly, the Project L 2D fighting game currently in development. alliance The character is said to be „making great progress“; that season 2 difficult to understand Netflix TV shows are on track to release in november.
Projects directly affected by the change include: legends of runeterra, the free-to-play card game announced in 2019, which Jadeja said is „not performing as well as we need it to.“ Its team will be scaled back and focused on PvE game mode. Another target of Riot's current gaming portfolio is the Riot Forge publishing label. Also announced in 2019partnering with smaller studios to create more League-related titles.
Jadeja said the layoffs were not to appease investors, but rather to „focus on our business and focus on what adds the most value to our players, which is what is truly valuable to our players' time.“ We need to try harder.” But that won't undo the impact on those directly affected or the chill that's spreading across the industry – Layoff Tracker maintained by Kotaku More than 3,800 jobs have already been lost in 2024, and it's only January.