Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill shifts role to chief product officer

30.11.2023 - 21:31 / gamedeveloper.com / Marc Merrill / Dylan Jadeja

Riot Games has created a new chief product officer (CPO) role, which will be headed up by co-founder Marc Merrill. 

Under his new position, Merrill will be responsible for "overseeing the ecosystems of all products" by the developer, including League of Legends, Valorant, and the various offshoots of those titles. He'll also be tasked with establishing those games' ecosystems going forward, and larger research and development at Riot overall.

The developer notes the CPO job was made in reflection of its "expansion of products" in the last half-decade. Outside of Valorant's launch in 2020 and larger embracing of mobile games, Riot and Studio Fortiche released the Arcane series for Netflix, with a second season due in fall 2024.

"Our goal is to double-down on our mission for players and to continue our evolution from delivering games as a service to bringing games as an experience to players," said CEO Dylan Jadeja. "Marc is incredibly well suited to drive this improved orientation and focus on behalf of players."

As Riot notes in its blog, Merrill has bounced between different key roles since he and Brandon Beck started the company in 2006. In addition to helping form Riot's esports and entertainment divisions, he also served as its first president and executive producer for League specifically before becoming co-CEO. 

"Marc shares our strategic vision to unify games, esports, and entertainment into an experience for players that transcends the sum of their parts," Jadeja continued. "We wouldn’t be the Company we are today without his leadership, and I am honored and excited to have him step into this critical role."

The developer has only just started to have more games under its belt, several of which it's published but had created by smaller or external teams. Riot's next big project is the fighting game currently known as Project L.