Tencent’s Riot Games cuts 530 jobs, saying it has lost focus

Chief Executive Officer Dylan Jadeja said in a memo that Riot has made “a number of big bets across the company,” including new games. But some of those projects have diverted resources. For its first 14 years, the company primarily operated League of Legends, still one of the most popular games of all time.

“Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway,” Jadeja said.

Riot, based in Los Angeles, will reduce the size of the Legends of Runeterra team, acknowledging the game hasn’t performed as well as hoped.

New development work from Riot Forge, an internal game development subsidiary, will end after the February release of Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story.

“Forge was an experiment to see what would happen when Rioters partnered with their favourite” independent developers, the blog post reads. “We’re proud of what we’ve done together to bring these stories to life, but it’s time to refocus our efforts on the ambitious projects underway internally at Riot.”

Other companies in the video game industry have been cutting jobs in recent weeks, including Unity Software Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch.

Riot is offering affected employees a minimum of six months’ salary, a cash bonus, career support and “even a personal computer if they do not possess one.”