This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.
Riot Games Is Laying Off 530 Workers, Shutting Down Riot Forge
23.01.2024 - 01:41 / thegamer.com / Dylan Jadeja
Riot Games has announced that it will be laying off 530 employees globally, with departures mostly impacting teams outside of development. In addition, Riot Games has also announced that it will shut down Riot Forge following the release of Bandle Tale next month, the arm of the publisher that works with other developers to deliver smaller, more traditional single-player experiences such as The Mageseeker and Song of Nunu.
This was announced by Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja, who claimed in a post to the official Riot Games website that the layoffs are mainly down to the publisher having "too many things underway". Jadeja claims that attempts to control costs were made throughout the last several months, but ultimately failed, forcing the company to make changes to its headcount.
Thankfully, Riot Games is offering much more support than other publishers have shown in the past, starting with a minimum of six months of severance pay as well as a cash bonus, even for those who recently joined. Affected employees will also be able to request a computer from Riot Games if they don't have one at home to help people look for new jobs, career support, visa support, and additional pay to help cover health benefits.
As for Riot Forge, Jadeja claims that it's being axed as he no longer sees it as "core to our strategy moving forward", as Riot Games will focus on existing titles such as League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift. Jadeja states that while this arm of the company is being shut down, it doesn't mean that single-player experiences are completely off the table. Instead, he says that Riot will happily work on a single player title "if the right project comes along", but that it would have to be pretty different.
Legends of Runeterra has also been impacted by these layoffs, as the team behind the game has been made smaller and is shifting its sole focus to the 'Path of Champions' PvE game mode.
With this news, 2024's layoff count is already looking shockingly high, with Twitch and Unity having already laid off 2,300 employees between them earlier this month. It was estimated that over 9,000 people in the games indsutry lost their jobs in 2023, and the fact we're almost a third of the way to matching that number just a single month into 2024 does not bode well for the rest of the year. Fingers crossed that things start to get better soon.
The website gametalkz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
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