It's not only Riot Games. It seems like every major company has been laying off a huge percentage of their workforce, similar to last year's January. Hope this doesn't become the norm for every single year.

I lost my job at EA last year due to layoffs. My friend lost his job last week at Lost Boys. The industry is on fire. I don't think people who are not involved in the day-to-day of the video game/VFX/Film/Animation community understand.. my LinkedIn is a wasteland of people announcing their layoffs, from Riot to Blizzard, Microsoft to LB. It's heartbreaking to see posts like "I'm going into month 6 of unemployment, and I've submitted over 200 applications and only had 6 interviews". The tech sphere is imploding, and it's not affecting nameless numbers, these are real people who have families, who have mortgages, people who need health coverage - for themselves or their family, or both. It's gut wrenching to watch this unfold in real time. And another thing people don't understand - even though remote work is on the rise, it's rare you get to stay where you are when you get a new job in this industry. It's not like being a doctor, or a mechanic, or a sales rep, you can't just go on down the street to the next business and apply there. Often, for games and film, if you switch studios, you move. I saw a Twitter post by a Riot employee that was pinned to their profile. They drove some 3500 miles from Toronto to LA or something in 2022 for their Riot job. Now it's gone. Where do they go? Stay in LA? Back to Canada? Sit tight and wait for the next job to make them move to Seattle or Austin or SF? It sucks.

They should have fired their entire incompetent higher-ups.

Remember when we had the Lore drought? I think that's when Riot started to realize that they were focusing on too much and almost abandoned their game. 2023 really shook them down because they started that year with promises and barely managed to save it by rushing 2v2v2v2 and more on the second half of the year. What I think is disappointing though is that Riot probably got too scared by what happened last year that they might not try to expand or lay their focus on other things other than their main games anymore. Hopefully Riot doesn't do us bad anymore by not releasing Lore for 6 months again because I think that's what caused Necrit to have the ability to squeeze 20 mins of content from a 30 second video.

I already brought this up on Nickibois video on this, but Graham McNeill's story "Where Icathia once stood" to this day is the best League of Legends story I have ever read. This guy managed to make Malphite interesting. What a loss. And this is only one of 500+ extremely talented Rioters. Every single one of them will be dearly missed and deserved to be treated better. What a shame.

RIP Legends of Runeterra. You were the best of them all

the CEO "takes on responsibility" by basically writting "my bad" and then gets to keep his job, title and MASSIVE pay plus bonus. WOW that's true accountability

I'm a multi-season masters 100+ LP player in LOR (actually high elo). I've not found a cardgame on computer that scratched my PvP itch quite like LOR did, this is honestly devastating for me.

I nearly cried with the LoR mention. They said "despite our best efforts" but really didn't do anything. Not an ad, not a mention on articles and not even a shout-out on the league client. I will miss this game so much.

I am so sorry for all the 530 people who were laid off hope they get a new job asap

Your closing statement is why I didn’t want to go with a snap judgment. Things suck right now for those who are affected by the layoffs, but the whole thing is super complex. Wishing people well and for them to find a new home quickly and painlessly

It is so strange how Riot is now saying they over hired when just last year they were talking about being short staffed and needed more people in order to complete more projects...

man. I really enjoyed Ruined King. If it wasn't overshadowed by that shittiest event of Sentinels of Light, it could had been really cool. Tho I think Mageseeker should had been a larger game, I did enjoyed it too. Hope I can play Nunu's game and the Bandle City too.

rest in peace my love Lor , i will play until i am the last player

At the same time, the second you send this stuff to employees on this scale, you have to have a press release ready. Letting people know internally is usually going to react in heresay. The one tip would have been to have them scheduled for a meeting. Tell them in person that morning, then have the post on twitter after the meeting with the article posted a few hours later to give most people a heads up. with potentially a few employees in other timezones still having to find out the hard way if they couldnt reasonably meet at midnight if they were in china

As someone who just got into university for animation, my dream of becoming a concept artist for video games is slowly becoming too distant… if this is happening now, who’s to say that by the time I graduate from university I’ll be able to find a job in the industry? And even if I do find a job, it’s not even guarantied to be a stable one with how frequently these lay offs are happening across the board My heart goes out to all the rioters who were laid off, and creatives from other companies as well. 💔💔💔

I agree that this practice is absolutely horrible, the "parachute" from Riot is insane all things concidered. Also a smart move to actually fire them and give them the parachute + benefits.. rather than a 6 month notice and then they lose their job at the 6 month mark. This will add to them that.. whilst it sucks losing their jobs, they feel a positive thing is still there for them.. Riot still cares in that matter.. rather than people continiously working for 6 months.. with the looming "firing" hanging over them.. morale etc. gets crushed

Biggest budget? Guess they ment budget cut...

The oddest thing to me is some of the people they sacked off are MANAGERS of major departments. They'll have to obviously fill those spots back. I mean; ' Business Development and Partnerships Manager'? How do you not have one of those. One of them is a GAME DESIGENR, NA Esports Comms Lead!?, Senior Game Producer for WR!!!, a Creative Producer for KDA/Heartsteel. And they're telling us they're refocusing on these areas? Do me a favor. They're in trouble and they know it.

one of my friends was an employee that was hit by this layoff. Its very sad that this happened over night and over email.

It was disheartening to witness when I feel like Riot is building up good things for the players for quite some time (promises on deeper lore, gameplay changes, new games, etc.) and then laying off people, who makes their IP grow and be better, instantly and through a tweet at that 😢 I hope the 11% are doing well and find new opportunities very soon!

The thing is, Riot is saying that they need to focus, reduce investment, etc. - which I do somewhat understand. The problem is, THEY are the ones that made the initial mistake to over-index in too many different projects. They spread themselves thin, over-hired, and now have to make up for that mistake.

oh man... i was laid off by my last job in a call in which they told me to "just clock out after hanging up". i didnt get any heads up beforehand that they were maybe planning on firing me, so it was incredibly upsetting. i can somewhat relate to this situation and my heart goes out to everyone who lost their job today.

On the LoR front, I'm one of those players that basically exclusively plays the Path of Champions. I played a bit of the regular card game (like, 10-20 games total), but never went too deep on it. However, through just the PvE mode, I've unlocked almost all of the region rewards (only have 2 regions left).

What I don't get is how a company like Riot with many intelligent and capable people (despite whatever the toxic community may say), never thought of adding the games permanently on the launcher, as a reminder, and also give the option to buy the Steam games with Riot Points maybe, from the client. Honestly I want to play the games but most of the times I just forget they exist. If they were in the launcher, at some point I would buy them.

Working for Riot was a treat, this put more into perspective

Laid off from Square Enix west last year, and currently still in 3rd party tech but it's not the same as being internal and having a family. Still to this day have friends running a D&D campaign from Square, though, which is dope

As much as it's still the fault of Riot for not thinking about this sort of thing long-term back during Covid, them actually admitting to it being an issue with how they handled the situation instead of shifting blame, and continuing to support those affected for months to come, is something I wish we saw more throughout this whole ordeal. Most companies, that are equally as if not more successful than Riot, just boot everyone out the door and wish them good luck.

I think there is a difference between the league community and the runeterra one, the latter is seen as disposable because we aren't profitable enough. If league starts struggling in the next few years I wouldn't be surprised if the focus really shifts towards the east with wild rift.

Even sadder is that everyone will just forget it when Arcane season 2 trailer drops

The beginning of the end for LoR was when Sixmorevodka left the project, Requiescat In Pace LoR, you were great

I’m feeling the same worry and melancholy that I felt recently as a hearthstone fan when they announced that Duels mode was being sunset as well. Sad to see my favorite games struggling and the people that make that in trouble

This is sadder than the day we lost Twisted Treeline forever ;(

so unfortunate, hope those laid off at riot are able to find employment soon, they're all so talented!

sometimes i space out and just listen to this guy's voice and accent, its so nice to just hear even if im not paying attention to the content for a min LOL.. some reason the accent reminds me of Sp4zie's accent

I know you don't enjoy spending your valuable time and energy on Riot (as you stated in a previous video, it's a sinking ship). But I really REALLY appreciate you taking that time and energy to help us (me) stay informed. You're so wonderful!

As a former riot CS for LOL and VAL, I concur how much this sucks. Rito was one of the best places to work for

To understand this, we need to also understand how the world and US economy is affecting everyone. In general, a company’s net income can be boiled down to “Revenue - Expenses = Net Income”. Even if a company has record revenue, expenses have also increased over the last couple years due to interest rates and inflation which makes that “net income” number MUCH lower, and even possibly negative. It’s an unfortunate circumstance and it sucks to see this happen across the tech and gaming industries this year. Hopefully everyone affected can land on their feet and find a well-paying position elsewhere quickly.

This layoff have been happening for the last couple of years, this exactly happened at my company last year and yeah riot pretty much did the same as my company did, its awful for the people that are let go and also horrible for the people that stays since you don't know when will this happen again, hopefully all this talented people finds a new job soon

Riot pulled out the good old decimation.

The company I work for decided to do something similar. Around 8% of the company I work for got laid off. These were not roles you could do without, they were important and crucial people. No one got any info, the higher-ups did a half-assed apology and yes, it was done just to please the board and shareholders. Why? Because you'd be surprised to find out that most companies are only led by a handful of either pathologically sociopathic people, but skilled people or complete incompetents that just got there through asskissing and some minor skills that literally anyone has. It's fun to imagine having a fund set aside for situations like these, to keep things rolling for at least 2 years to stabilise and find some solutions, but no, you'd find people hard pressed to give a shit about the working drones, since after all, the current system makes top-down decisions and companies are literal autocratic entities with little to no input from the ones actually making the company work.

So for the past 4-5 years, I have run a community helping people prepare for the Riot internships. From networking, resources, portfolio building, etc. I have seen several of the rioters affected come through my community and "make it", and for all of them it was a dream come true. Reading their posts announcing they got fired was truly heartbreaking, and I can say the entire community has been drastically affected by this change. It's not about the benefits/severence, these people put their heart and souls into Riot only to get their dreams crushed publically for the world to see. Tart and Zoe Crowns deserve better, along with so many affected by this.

I was hired at a hospital during covid, and after covid, I was given a 2 month notice to increase my performance by accomplishing a lot of extra work along with the exhausting amount I've been doing. I did my best for 2 weeks and lost hope. Luckily, i had 6 weeks to find another job and luckily found one 3 weeks later. I hold no grudges and appreciate the experience.

Its not just the technology sector that this is happening too, I got a displacement notice at Wells Fargo as well my whole site is being closed down

I think making LoR a Gwent styled game that you can PvP in is a brilliant idea that might just actually save the game in the end. Then if they implement it into the rest of the worlds lore, I'm sure it'll do very well.

Sad day indeed

This news is tearing me apart. Simply put. I'm just so heartbroken at this point that I can't do much else but wallow in it. I hope the industry levels out, and these folks can find more work. I also hope that Runeterra will still continue to grow and change from this. I don't want this to be the end. Not yet.

This is very common in all companies when it comes to reducing cost, managers always say that the hardest part of management is laying off people, because it's always out of nowhere since if you announce it before hand it lowers the company's morale. But after the lay off announcement companies will try to redeploy you on different branches or roles that needs attention. You have to either take that role or just resign, because mostly the new role given to you is something you don't like.

That is how layoff work at major tech companies because a few bad people will use their access to damage the company on the way out the door. For this reason good people can't be warned they are getting laid off ahead of time because a few bad apples could start deleting databases and source code. You learn you are laid off when your access to the network gets blocked.

Indie games are amazing, the give players a breath un terms os stories or gameplays etc. Hope riot forge team could create their own developer enterprised or something

Every large company in tech has been cleaning house, I think it's the current trend. During covid, companies scaled very high with remote work and just in general. We are still coming down from that massive scaling, almost coming back to pre-covid norms it seems

I only found out about Riot Forge games by your channel, they weren't advertised anywhere in my space. I loved ruined king and I think better marketing would make this game sell a lot more. It's sad that Riot Forge is closing :(

It's really worrying. I'm scared the future of league and other games will be comprimised. I mean just think about it : - MANY rioters were fired out of nowhere - it being out of the blue means other rioters did not prepare to be working as less people - project will come out slower due to less rioters - and I'm pretty sure the morale is pretty low at riot so there's also less work thats gonna be done

My friend this is corporate world. It is always about shareholders. Thats exactly how it happens in every large corpo. This is a cycle, neutral or red line appears layoffs happen. Green line appears they start hiring. Currently we experience post covid slow down. Massive value rise stopped and companies start "savings" . Its not just the TECH sector. Its pretty much every massive corpo eg. lets say.. Pfizer etc. This is a cycle and as we can see it keeps on going.

As far as LoR is concerned, I assume that the major change will be that that previously promised 'monthly update' where we got a major update, a tweak update, and then a fill update, rotating. It will probably just be major updates and minor updates from now on, with longer gaps between the big ones. Not only did they say they are downsizing their team again, they said they are working on Path of Champions again, which they've said before. They've redone it a few times (I have the swain hand lab icon from when its first iteration was a lab), and its current form is probably the best. The issue since its current form launched has always been content. Not champions to play, but paths to go against. Its super limited, and we only got 3 new permanents paths since it launched, still lacking any in the friejord. The weekly random ones are okay, but they range from easy to miserable, with some of them being really rough. The 'Monthly Challenge' doesn't really deliver the experience I want either. PVE is the majority of their playerbase, but how can we keep PVE going without monetizing it like a generic mobile game? You can already buy PVE shard lootboxes. But the focus on PVE turns me to the PVP, something I havent touched since Irelia/Azir. I feel like the game had some really cool ideas, but not all of those cool ideas can be allowed to work in tandem. As a result, the PVP crowd slowly shifted away, and now LoR just has most of its PVE crowd, and they dont generate money. But additionally, a lot of players are probably long time players. They have what they want. You cant get more money out of them. I have every card. Ive been playing since launch. I have a few cardbacks, I paid for a board i liked in the end, and I have all the cards. The cardskins are really cool, and I would consider buying some of them outright if they were tied to the event passes, which i wont purchase on principle. But on the other hand, how much could LoR really cost them? maybe tone down the level ups, but thats it. Its drawings projected digitally that have code values tied to them. Are the servers for it that expensive? My only hope is that having to downsize the LoR team a second time means it grew too bloated again between prunes, and thats why we got that weird nilah arc that made no sense, and bluesakaiser

As someone who got laid off last year, I know how terrible it is and hope they find an opportunity soon. In 2022, my (previous) company laid off over 3000 people in 2022, a similar amount in 2023 (which included me) and soon about 1500 announced. Hang in there, everyone!

I've seen some people take the 6 month support as a sign the now-unemployed shouldn't feel AS bad about this. While it's great Riot did that as an attempt to cushion this, especially compared to other companies- the people that lost their jobs, Riot was likely their dream job. Sad to see, really. Had a simmilar dream once. Best of luck and much morale to the people that got laid off!

My bet is that due to new Chinese laws and Tencent loosing a tramendous amount of shares (about 20%), and is cutting a lot on Riot games. It's way too close between one another to dismiss as nothing

I was laid off with 8 other people in a corporate job ( they let us go to have customer service be in a different state rather than the corporate office ) . We were all pulled into a room and told we were let go and then the email went out to the company about it. We were escorted out of the office not allowed to clean our desk until another day with security. I was given a month of severance and my health benefits until the end of the month.

Really wish LoR would have a path of champions similar to what they do in Yu-Gi-Oh Dual Links, where you basically unlock and progress a character's story/backstory/lore/growth/cards/passives by playing their deck. It's so cool and motivating.

Tencent lost $47 billion in December, this 100% has to do with shareholders. They are lying.

the reason for so many indie games gaining attention over the big ones is mostly the bad decisions the companies make aiming for pure profit and often just throwing together whatever works leading to so many bad soulless copy paste AAA games you keep seeing. Indie developers on the other hand rarely expect their game to go viral or have big funding so they do what they want to and actually care. Which even big companies developers do but thier passion may not matter in the face of a money hungry company looking for easy profits.

Not that it justifies or makes things right for their mistakes but the severance packages are insanely generous for any major company.

Im really sad for riot forge, The ruined king, Mageseeker ,song of Nunu and now Bandletale, all of it gave me a gaming experience i haven't gotten in a while. It was me in first grade going back home to play Zuma or Insaniquarium all over again. Just sad sad day for the comunity.

Tencent and creative freedom? Words I never knew would be said together. Thank you Winnie the Pooh.

There goes the saying "if you choose to be a bee, be prepared to sacrifice for the hive".

I do not know about Riot and Tencent, but I worked for one of the child companies to company Sea (for example one of tier children companies is Garena) and when they announced massive lay offs due to closing business in our country, we had massive lay off benefits. So as much as loosing a job sucks, I hope at least they ended on good terms

As much as this sucks, it’s happened to me as well - one of my past jobs, I had access to prod servers (web programmer), so when layoffs came in the IT depts, we were given the news one at a time, escorted off site by security one at a time, and given 30 days paid leave, because they normally give 30 days notice but couldn’t risk the access that the IT people had, so…

It will. The reduction of lore is the death of a game. You HAVE to have a hardcore base for a story to grow interest in more exterior player groups. Otherwise, if you don't have your hardcore lore players, its just less advertisement essentially, and less involvement, and less involvement decreases the hardcore base even further. The creation of exterior games was something my wife and I always looked forward to and loved, and it made us feel like the company was healthy and here to stay. Taking that away feels like the well went stagnant.

Love how these tech companies are making "record profits" yet still fire hundreds. But don't worry I'm sure the CEOs will raise their pay and bonuses!!

At least when it comes to LoR and the champions to come, I'm pretty sure the team always worked like a year in advance for coming expansions. So I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the card releases for 2024 were already planned and done in 2023.

Re: the severance package, it might be just something demanded by the local laws, especially with the scale, or negotiated with unions, if there are any, and equalized across the board. I know in my country there are regulations about mass layoffs.

Isn't this the company that claimed they couldn't have a cinematic last year due to staffing? Truthfully I had let go of that but now we get a cut? Yikes, Riot has truthfully taken my heart over the years. The world that has been built is phenomenal from all sources, outside games like ruined king and mageseeker really added a lot of depth to the world. I do hope that Ruit will be able to continue the same amount of amazing content with less people. I'm sure it's hard for everyone around.

What a waste of our time. Some of us got kinda excited about the lore again thanks to the cinematic and now this. Hope the employees can find a job soon, they still after all the most affected by this

Curious how long it will take before companies outsource/move to eastern europe. There is a booming tech industry, lower salary costs for basically the same (or quickly reaching it) skills as in the western countries.

I was so excited for Bandel City but now I'm scared for it's post launch support.

I saw the tweet last night. I knew Necrit would talk about this, but like even the layoffs were crazy 💀

what happened to the biggest budget in league history bro

Well if you think about it... the cinematic trailer setting the tone for 2024 was about the "Reaper" of League

6 months severance is absolutely wild.

The saddest part for those let go is the knowledge that the idiots responsible for the mess...aren't going anywhere.

I watch many different Riot news creators talk about this but I must say this was the most thorough analysis of the incident. Necrit, I wanted to let you know that your dedication is well appreciated and respected! Please let that be known ❤️

Tech companies always have these mass layoffs from time to time then they have a mass hiring. That industry is the most unpredictable when it comes to job security. In my opinion it’s to get rid of those that have reached the wage cap then they can hire interns and entry levels at a much lower wage. Just my opinion but this also happens in the restaurant industry when I was part of for many years.

The severance bonuses are really thoughtful, this doesn’t seem like malice or money grubbing just making up for mistakes

I play League and then I also play Destiny 2! Bungie also did the same thing. Just apart of life. Layoffs are normal. Yes it’s sad and support to these hard workers are definitely needed. No need to be toxic, just how it is. Eventually it happens to everyone. However I would say a lot of the gaming industry struggles with communication, clarity and management.

RIP LoR best card game ever made so much generous, fun games, enjoyed the lore...... its sad they are pulling out the plug

I am more surprise that Riot was able to wait this long for the layoff

a lot of tech companies went on hiring sprees and as a result of that overstaffed and as the economy started to take a downward trend so would their budget control.

RiotForge was the best riot content we got since the Burning Tides event years ago and Arcane, I hate to see creativity being shut down like this. Moreover it was a great way to expand league lore, which up until... always ? Feels stagnant, there's no progression in anything. At least we'll still see Project L and hopefully the MMO, if they don't drop it like everything else. Personally : Mageseeker showed Sylas's growth from a vengeance driven killer into a leader. RuinedKing was one of the best rpg experience I had AND managed to give us what most people wanted, lore PROGRESSION. Song of Nunu felt junky sometimes and not as "fluid" or even "finished" but I still had a blast.

LoR had so much potential and they never properly used it. I dont know what happened with the content pipeline or whoever makes the business decisions regarding LoR, but they seriously should have had way more cosmetics and a RANDOMIZER button so that we didn't need to actively swap our stuff all the time. Plus the lack of marketing, and the lack of integration in the league client... it's all so frustrating for them to go "We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas so byebye LoR"

One thing ive seen from some videos is that Tencents marketvalue dropped by a lot in china because of the new regulation they put out. No "First Time Topping off" feature, no "IF you buy x many you get y" feature. all those are going to be banned, which is why a lot of Chinese gaming markets have plumeted. But it could be just one of the many reasons why riot needs to save money.

They fired the producer of K/DA, that alone should be a crime.

MMO is never coming , it's over

Thank you for trying to explain the whole situation to the masses. Too many of clueless reactionary people acting like Riot is the worst company ever when that is not even true in the slightest, in fact Riot is better than the average American big companies....

Honestly, the instability of the games industry is the reason why I went the Aerospace and Defense route when it comes to creative roles (3D Modeling in my case).

I'm not sure what else they could have done more honestly. Riot gave many bonuses to the people they're laying off, so I think they did it fairly.

Holy shit. I wished I got a tiny fraction of the severance benefits that these rioters got. Or even just the career assistance program. Would have been nice to get some sort of help in getting a job, moving forward.

As an adult with a job, the thing to remember here is that if the company functions the exact same after the layoffs and if the game is still the same quality, the layoffs were likely justified. It sucks that people lose their jobs but without 100% of the information about why the particular people were picked to be laid off there's not much reason making a mob about it.

They could make an RTS game based on Runeterra's universe. Im sure that will be popular beyond league players. Also they can make an eSports out of it.

Also, in all of these layoffs, from each company, quite often people getting fired find out via social media instead of a private contact. This seems evil at first but it's to prevent disgruntled fired employees from going apeshit while they still have access to stuff like the source code