Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/2024-player-update

by raydev • 3 years ago

139 165 3 years ago

latexr• 3 years ago

Beginning of the third paragraph:

This means we’re eliminating about 530 roles globally, which represents around 11% of Rioters, with the biggest impact to teams outside of core development.

asylteltine3• 3 years ago

Any time I see a title that talks about the future, changes, a message from, etc I assume it’s some ceo bullshit talking around doing layoffs

opisthenar84• 3 years ago

A seemingly common theme through all these layoffs is that engineers are less impacted than other orgs.

stg22• 3 years ago

In general, the more direct the impact of your role on short-term revenue, the safer you are when your company starts sacrificing people to the gods of quarterly accounts.

Ancillary service workers always get hit badly, but good salespersons are often safer than good engineers.

resolutebat2• 3 years ago

Only if their salesperson manages to hit their number very quarter without fail. I've seen people blow their quota out of the water in Q1, and get shitcanned when Q2 is quiet.

smt882• 3 years ago

This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block.

Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact.

While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expensive to replace and who may take institutional knowledge of the inner workings of the product with them.

resolutebat2• 3 years ago

Sales does not belong on that list, since their impact is the easiest of all to measure ($$$).

Also, top-down layoffs tend to target expensive staff with large paychecks, without accounting for institutional knowledge or intangible value delivered.

MaxHoppersGhost3• 3 years ago

For enterprise SaaS companies sales is one of the most important roles, tied with engineering. Especially if your engineering org/product is weak.

whatyesaid• 2 years ago

How do you know who they're firing? Nobody knows what "core tech" is. They are clearly getting rid of people in LoR. And game companies aren't bloated with sales people.

cannonpalms• 2 years ago

There are typically crowdsourced spreadsheets available from https://layoffs.fyi that cover title, etc.

catlover76• 3 years ago

fairly generous severance terms

latchkey• 3 years ago

mxwsn• 3 years ago

Closely related, but not a duplicate. This post explicitly calls out services and products that will continue to be supported, like world's, musical collaborations like KDA, the Arcane anime, and upcoming Project L.

wildknocker• 3 years ago

This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity.

I smell BS

phone8675309• 3 years ago

It's a necessity to make line go up forever

MaxHoppersGhost3• 3 years ago

Everyone overhired the last 3 years thinking the good times were forever. They’re probably overloaded with roles they don’t need anymore and have needs in other places so it really doesn’t make sense to keep folks.

DaiPlusPlus2• 3 years ago

I assume video-game sales went up during the stay-at-home pandemic years; with that now behind us, this isn’t surprising at all. In fact, I’m surprised this didn’t already happen a year ago.

krainboltgreene• 2 years ago

Everyone overhired the last 3 years thinking the good times were forever.

It's very convenient that this isn't measurable and if you asked anyone in the industry at the time they most likely would have said "We don't have nearly enough" people.

chris_wot• 3 years ago

These severance packages seem pretty reasonable, and they aren't trying to BS too much. I guess this is the best way you can do this thing.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 2 years ago

They also list specific projects they're cutting, and for one of them, explain why.

matt3210• 3 years ago

Their careers page is disabled.

sour-taste• 3 years ago

We'll see how long that lasts. That's the shitty part of these layoffs: as soon as the negative PR dies down hiring resumes for less tenured employees that aren't as expensive (fewer stock grants, lower starting salaries). No matter how they phrase it in their letters this is always about making more money and dropping expensive employees is one way they'll do it.

joshuamcginnis• 3 years ago

Minimum six months severance pay + healthcare + cash bonus. That is incredibly generous all things considered.

ocdtrekkie3• 3 years ago

Yeah to be honest, a half-year sabbatical with time to job hunt non-frantically is a luxury I've never had. I love my current job, but I would probably look at a half year severance like a vacation.

hipadev23• 3 years ago

non-frantically

It appears to be very heavily biased toward artists, so even if they start that job hunt today, it’s still going to be frantic.

0xjmp2• 3 years ago

In this current job market 6 months to next job is a very quick turnaround...

compiler-guy• 2 years ago

Six months is long enough to spend two months on the beach, two months looking for a job, and two months getting double paid.

goalonetwo6• 2 years ago

Sorry for the intrusive question but if you make software engineer level salary how is it that you don't have multiple months/years saved to mitigate for those possible layoffs?

Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries?

I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that software engineering is is eventually going to end. Layoffs are always looming. When that day comes, I want to relax as much as possible and not have a deadline to find a job,

nccnm• 3 years ago

Just in case you're Riot employee. I'm working on LoR game as external partner. If I can have minimum six months, I'll be very happy.

jarsin• 3 years ago

I still remember the eye-roll my manager gave me when I asked if there was severance when laid off in 2009.

I feel bad for all these layoffs, but it seems the support system has improved drastically since then.

Imz4di• 3 years ago

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of service, which was 8 weeks.

atlas_hugged• 2 years ago

Name and shame please.

BadHumans• 2 years ago

I got laid off from a gaming company and my severance was pitiful and amounted to 1 month of rent. I think this is a fantastic severance

nox1012• 2 years ago

Did you look into unemployment benefits? I've never done this but I had acquaintances who looked forward to getting laid off because they'd get unemployment payments from the government for up to 6 months so they saw it as vacation. All they had to do was lie about looking for a job. This was quite a while ago so things might have changed.

PS: not saying you shouldn't have gotten a better severance package.

fatnoah• 2 years ago

I got laid off and my "severance" was the minimum mandated WARN act period and "don't mail your stuff back to us." Of course, the layoff happened the month before equity vesting and annual bonus happened.

biotopia2• 2 years ago

The layoff announcement mentioned that the 11% staff laid off is global. It's possible a lot of people laid off are actually in China, since Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games. There is a trend for Chinese companies to not hire workers that are over 35 years old, so some of these employees might be unemployed for a long time. Also, Chinese economy is in the crapper right now.

jascha_eng• 2 years ago

Riot is an american company though, I'm pretty sure they have most of their employees in the US and not China.

araes• 2 years ago

Their offices around the world can be found here: https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/offices Out of 20, only 1 in China, Shanghai.

Most are fairly high cost living locations outside the US (ex: Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, Dubai). Mumbai and Sao Paulo are not cheap for India and Brazil.

paxys• 3 years ago

Not a fan of any of their games, but I'm so glad this didn't affect Arcane.

thot_experiment• 3 years ago

It's absolutely wild how good Arcane is, especially considering League imo has the absolute worst aesthetic quality of any popular game. I'm glad they didn't let any of the art directors for the game (does the game even have art directors?) meddle with the show.

Blackthorn3• 2 years ago

does the game even have art directors?

We know it has somebody with a foot fetish. Look at the footwear of all the female characters (at least the ones made before 2016, I haven't played it since then).

I did try to watch some recent games and while it looks like the gameplay itself has improved since then, the effect visuals have somehow managed to get even more blended and difficult to read. How do they manage to fail this badly at it for so long?

asylteltine3• 3 years ago

Why is everyone doing layoffs at once? Is it just in the news now or are they taking advantage of everyone else doing it?

0xjmp2• 3 years ago

I think Sundar Pichai put it succinctly: “durable cost savings”

rishav_sharan• 3 years ago

December marks the end of the fiscal year for many companies, making January an ideal month for "organisational realignment and adjustment".

OnionBlender• 3 years ago

Probably don't want the bad PR from doing layoffs before Christmas.

qqqwerty• 2 years ago

FWIW, severance is usually a lump sum, so it absolutely benefits the employees to wait until the new year because the severance will likely get taxed at a lower tax bracket.

devjab2• 2 years ago

The economy isn’t doing so well and it’s not going to correct itself any time soon. It’s not really that noticeable on the larger scale but any company that produces anything non-digital is still having supply line issues. Not as bad as a few years ago, but still bad enough to cost the global economy a lot of potential growth.

Then there is the higher interest rates, which in themselves are an issue for the economy. Not so much because companies “need” to borrow money as such, but because the ridiculously low interest rates made it easier to make more money since you could fund things with money you didn’t have, since it was basically free to do so. A lot of places even sort of dropped the ball on this, not locking in the rates on their loans because, well, because we’re collectively rather stupid, so many organisations are looking at making deals with banks to find some reasonable place to land these loans in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone too bad.

There is more to it than that, but the over all result is that a long with the inflation (which may have stopped but it’s not like prices are dropping just because they paused increasing) wage stagnation and so on, is that there is a lot less purchasing power and willingness both in the investment and in the consumer markets.

You can say that companies over hires during the COVID lock downs, which isn’t really wrong, but we’re also sort of in a recession that we have collective agree not to talk about. Partly because it’s a weird recession considering the job market is hot.

asylteltine3• 2 years ago

Is the economy bad? Seems fine to me. In general a “bad economy” seems entirely made up. It’s not like the money just disappears. I think it’s a concept invented to facilitate wealth transfers.

TheAceOfHearts3• 2 years ago

Every year Riot releases a new cinematic for League of Legends to celebrate the start of the season. Last year they released the worst cinematic in all of their history. This announcement makes me wonder if their sudden rapid growth was at least partially the reason for why they ended up shipping such a bad video.

In the last year Riot also started to sell severely overpriced skins, despite a lot of outrage from the community. With their lootbox system you basically only guaranteed certain skins if you spent like $200, which many players complained was inaccessible for them. Maybe this was a sign that financials were not in a great place for the company.

darkwizard42• 2 years ago

Last year I believe the company they were working with had issues and they had to scrap together something urgently.

No comment on the other aspects but I suspect they are still printing money (comparing to Fortnite and Valve)

clovoak• 2 years ago

Got a link to the cinematic you mention? Haven't heard of it.

TheAceOfHearts3• 2 years ago

Sure! In order to set a bit of context...

First watch the 2022 cinematic [0], to get an idea of what they normally ship. Then watch the 2023 cinematic [1], to see how badly they messed up. And just to drive the point home, compare it with the 2024 cinematic [2] which is a return to form.

If you look at the 2023 cinematic in a vacuum it might seem generic and uninspired, but then when you compare it with the 2022 and 2024 cinematics the quality gap becomes apparent.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYqT0_9VR4

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJT5d5Ue3ao

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHhqwBwmRkI

atraac• 2 years ago

In the last year Riot also started to sell severely overpriced skins, despite a lot of outrage from the community.

They learned from Valorant. It has extremely overpriced skins from the beginning too, and the outrage lasts a single post on Reddit once every few months and is downvoted by fanboys. They just don't care, people will buy them anyway, most people will forget in a moment. I'm guessing they have data from Valorant that simply shows they make more if they just aim at whales. I doubt they would just raise prices without giving it a real thought.

dkjaudyeqooe2• 2 years ago

Is not being able to buy a skin some kind of tragedy? It's a luxury item at any price.

I'm sure there is a kid somewhere crying into his controller because he's been rejected by his online friends because he's using the default skin, but I think he's learning a valuable life lesson.

zen928• 2 years ago

It's a potentially negative financial marker to the success of their business model of selling skins if their skins don't sell, I don't think there's any more sentiment to the statement beyond that

stewartjarod• 2 years ago

when mmo?

charliebwrites• 2 years ago

Is anyone keeping track of the layoffs that have happened so far?

Seems like there’s been quite a few lately, would be cool to see them all in one place, tracked over time

pnine• 2 years ago

https://layoffs.fyi/

Madmallard• 2 years ago

Corporate greed? Unfortunately game companies often don’t recover as well from layoffs due to the completely unpredictable nature as to whether a game will be a success. Maybe Riot learned the hard way that you can’t just throw talent at a genre and expect to continue massive growth?

1B05H1N• 2 years ago

Didn't make enough money off skins this year I guess. Good luck to those impacted.

99catmaster• 2 years ago

Is their Vanguard anti cheat still a root kit?

bobobob420• 2 years ago

Yup and i cant even have virtualization enabled to use docker or I cant play Valorant. I have to constantly toggle and reboot system.

stevage3• 2 years ago

This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity.

They don't seem to explain in any way why it's a necessity.

mdorazio• 2 years ago

I read that as they have negative cash flow and need to fix it ASAP.

jachee2• 2 years ago

…in order to appease shareholders and/or hit earnings numbers, right?

Spellman• 2 years ago

Similarly.

And why is that bad? Because once you run out of money everything is cooked

stevage3• 2 years ago

If that's true, then this is the weaseliest way to express that:

The adjustments we're making aim to focus us on the areas that have the greatest impact on your experience while reducing investment on things that don’t.

BlackjackCF2• 2 years ago

I wonder if it actually had to do more with esports pulling back quite a bit this last year. Riot was leaning into that pretty hard for League. That had to factor in for a large chunk of the headcount for layoffs.

I just can’t imagine they’re cash flow negative given how popular League and Valorant are, but maybe they’re seeing enough of a dip in their numbers that they’re trending in that direction.

quartesixte• 2 years ago

Not making payroll because you go cashflow negative makes Boards and C-suites tremble in fear because of the whole “piercing the corporate veil” concept that makes them personally liable for not making payroll.

So you layoff 10% to save the other 90%.

Because otherwise you’d have put 100% of your company out of a job + knock on effects to local economy, being sued, prosecuted for all sorts of things etc etc

bogomipz• 2 years ago

Was this Tencent's decision then since they own Riot? Tencent seems to be facing some headwinds. See:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/22/tencent-netease-shares-plumm...

uudecoded• 2 years ago

Has anyone noticed that there are now 78 comments on this post and no Rioters checking in? Have I missed something?

On any HN corporate layoff post, we should expect some volume of named company FTEs or impacted folks commenting. There seems to be a pattern here that has been ebbing and flowing over the last few years.

Should this be a titled phenomenon/effect? I see at least 3 options here:

1) Named company employees do not read/post on HN (if true, is this HN content? divergent topic...)

2) Named company employees are coerced or otherwise compensated to not comment on these matters, even if they do not directly impact them

3) Named company employees do not care about this n% layoff and are withholding comment

edit: formatting

silisili• 2 years ago

I always assumed, perhaps naively, that gamedev folks skewed younger on the whole due to work life balance and burnout, whereas this site skews a bit older. Maybe just a demographic mismatch?

coffeebeqn• 2 years ago

Most software engineers I know in games go to HN. I used to work in games and always read it

whateveracct2• 2 years ago

(2) feels most likely - there's probably something in the severance package about it. I know I've seen that before.

goalonetwo6• 2 years ago

What are the chances that a company figures out which employee is posting on HN? Especially if they use a throwaway as is usually the case?

biotopia2• 2 years ago

The layoff announcement mentioned that the 11% staff laid off is global. It's possible a lot of people laid off are actually in China, since Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games.

It's doubtful that these Chinese employees are chatting about it on hacker news, since it would draw attention of the authorities. Also, there is a trend for Chinese companies to not hire workers that are over 35 years old, so most of these employees are probably in shock on how they would pay their mortgages and support their parents at the same time. And Chinese economy is in the crapper right now.

Tencent is doing pretty horrible as well. Tencent Leads $80 Billion Rout as China Rekindles Crackdown Fear https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tencent-plunges-china-unveils...

meheleventyone4• 2 years ago

Games has a more developed culture of not talking outside the company in public spaces mostly around in development games but that tends to extend beyond that as well.

badpun• 2 years ago

Perhaps most people laid off weren't software developers.

danielodievich• 2 years ago

Meanwhile, their Seattle area office that they purchased for $114M in 2021 https://www.mi-reporter.com/news/riot-games-stands-in-the-pe... to put in ~400 people is almost done https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/riot-seattle-office-design... and from what I can see through the windows, it's looking really nice.

BlackjackCF2• 2 years ago

I’m surprised that they decided to move forward with the project in 2021 due to COVID.

Were they just too far in with contracts at that point to duck out?

Zetobal• 2 years ago

It's office space literally everyone dipped into that pool of free money.

AlbertCory• 2 years ago

Quick translation for those too busy to read it all:

We're going to do lots of fantastic things. Not with you, though.

bob1029• 2 years ago

Our strategy will more tightly integrate esports, music, and entertainment with our games. Esports isn't just about competition; it's about the highs, the lows, and the communities that flourish around the games.

From my perspective, Riot Games began a course for the rocks the moment they started chasing esports and "meta". Imagine developing a game where you apply punitive actions to players for selecting game play paths you openly allowed them to pick. "Oops! you're having fun slightly wrong so enjoy this ban". I could get over some of this in support of high stakes gameplay objectives, but if it's all the time at every level it's like a cancer. The exact moment I stopped playing League of Legends was the day they released the patch that said we could no longer stack items. I felt the fun go away like a light switch being flipped off.

I am done with consuming games as of 2024. I used to game more than I worked not too long ago. The MBAs and related types have completely sucked the fun out of the room. I feel for the developers and artists who will be job hunting this year. Their leaders have failed them on many levels and over such a long period of time. LoL was the game to play for a solid decade and there isn't any obvious reason it couldn't have continued for another.

Blizzard and Overwatch are a carbon copy of this if you need one. In this case, the original game didn't even survive. They had to increment the integer and completely kill & bury the original title to justify their insanity to investors. The only viable path I can see at this point is to start a game studio from the ground up and avoid all external capital by burning gigantic piles of my own cash. Fun at all costs.

stillasleep• 2 years ago

i hope the mmo survives

happytiger• 2 years ago

I love how douche baggie all these letters are. They always describe canning people as “change that brings opportunities.”

Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

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