Riot Games to axe 11% of workforce

Tencent’s Riot Games has announced it is cutting 11 per cent of its workforce.

The move means that around 530 roles will be axed globally.

The gaming company said that its decision will have the biggest impact on teams outside of core development, with employees losing their jobs across all areas of the business.

Riot Games chief executive Dylan Jadeja told its staff that after “jumping headfirst” into broadening its portfolio, the company now doesn’t have a sharp enough focus.

“Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to,” said the chief executive. “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.”

Jadeja said that over the past few months the company has asked senior staff to make tradeoffs in the things their teams are working on. Additionally, the company has rolled out hiring slowdowns and freezes, but this hasn't been enough to effectively address its higher costs.

The business will also wind down Riot Forge, its project for collaborating with external studios to develop smaller scale games, and cut some features of its game Legends of Runeterra.



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