Messy games is laying off staff for the second time this year, the studio confirmed Tuesday. The latest round of layoffs will affect the PC development team behind Riot’s wildly popular MOBA title League of Legends. Riot said the layoffs are part of larger team changes that will ensure the long-term growth and improvement of the league. Affected employees will receive compensation, the studio said.
Riot Games is cutting more jobs
In its announcement, Riot Games said the decision to remove the roles was not made to “save money” and that the League of Legends team will eventually grow in size.
“As part of these changes, we have taken the difficult decision to eliminate some roles. This isn’t about cutting staff to save money – it’s about making sure we have the right experience so that League continues to be great for another 15 years and beyond,” said the Riot Games co-founder Mark Merrill in a post on X Tuesday. “While team performance is more important than team size, the League team will eventually be even bigger than it is today as we develop the next phase of the League,” he added.
Riot did not confirm the number of employees affected by the latest round of layoffs in its announcement, but a studio spokesperson did confirmed to Eurogamer that 32 employees, including 27 roles on the League of Legends team and an additional five roles in publishing, will be affected.
The laid-off employees will receive a benefits package that includes a minimum of six months’ salary, an annual bonus, job placement assistance, health insurance and more, Merrill said in its release.
According to Riot’s co-founder, the studio is working on the “next phase” of League of Legends and will share more about its “ambitious plans” for the game in the future.
This is the second round of layoffs to hit Riot Games this year. In January the studio laid off 530 employees –– about 11 percent of the global workforce. Teams outside of core development took the biggest hit from the layoffs.
“Today we are a company without a clear enough focus and simply put, we have too many things going on. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected. Our costs have grown to the point where they are unsustainable,” Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja said in a letter to employees at the time.
