Tencent Holdings’ Riot Games lays off 530 employees globally, S’pore office also affected

Tencent Holdings’ Riot Games announced yesterday (January 22) that it is laying off 530 employees, or about 11 per cent of its staff globally, with its teams outside of core development seeing the largest impact.

In a blog post that included a letter to employees from CEO Dylan Jadeja, the League of Legends producer acknowledged that its “had made a number of big bets across the company” since 2019, causing its costs to “grow to the point where they are unsustainable”.

Over the last several years, the company has brought in new talent, expanded its global footprint, and changed its operating model to match its ambitions, which ultimately more than doubled its headcount.

Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they’re unsustainable, and we’ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure – which is vital to a creative company like ours. All of this puts the core of our business at risk. 

Moving forward, Riot Games will be “refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects”, including League of Legends and Valorant, to move the company towards a more sustainable future. The video game producer is also halting new game development under its publishing label Riot Forge, and will drop some staff and features in Legends of Runeterra.

“We’re not doing this to appease shareholders or to hit some quarterly earnings number — we’ve made this decision because it’s a necessity,” the CEO adds.

Riot Games’ office in Singapore doubles down as its Asia-Pacific Headquarters, and is one of its largest offices in the world, employing over 180 staff. It is unclear how many Singapore employees have been affected by the lay off.

Riot Games is the latest company to join dozens of major names in the tech industry laying off staff by the hundreds, with companies such as Google, Amazon and Unilever making major cutbacks.

Featured Image Credit: Riot Games