In a sobering sign of the times, Riot Games has announced it will be laying off around 530 people, an 11% reduction of the developer's headcount. Best known for its extremely popular League of Legends franchise on PC, which attracts more than 100 million active users monthly, it's a grim portent of the year to come.
This affects PlayStation players because Riot was in the process of bridging the gap to console, using its Riot Forge publishing label as a vehicle. The plan was to partner with indie studios and have them develop LoL games on other platforms across a wide range of genres. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story was the first outing on PlayStation, followed by The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story. A total of six games were developed, some exclusive to Nintendo and Xbox, but that experiment will now cease, and the company will refocus on its core offerings.
Obviously, there are no good layoffs, but it must be noted that the reported severance package is much more generous than the majority we report on. Tencent, the owner of Riot Games, will offer at least six months' salary, a cash bonus, a personal computer, and career support for each employee affected. CEO Dylan Jadeja put the situation starkly: "Today, we're a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway."