Riot Games lays off more employees but says the League of Legends team will be 'even larger' in the future

League of Legends studio Riot Games has announced another round of layoffs, while—somewhat counterintuitively—simultaneously promising that the League team will grow to be "even larger than it is today" in the future.

Word of the layoffs came in a message posted on X by Riot co-founder Marc Merrill, who said Riot "has made changes to our teams and how we work to make sure we can keep improving the League experience now and for the long-term."

"As part of the changes, we've made the tough decision to eliminate some roles," Merrill wrote. "This isn't about reducing headcount to save money—it's about making sure we have the right expertise so that League continues to be great for another 15 years and beyond. While team effectiveness is more important than team size, the League team will eventually be even larger than it is today as we develop the next phase of League."

In a follow-up post, Merrill said "success isn’t about throwing more people or money at a challenge," and that the real priority is "is having the right team, right priorities, and a sustainable approach to delivering what players need."

"If we’re solving the wrong problems, more resources won’t fix it," Merrill wrote. "It’s about building smarter and healthier, not just bigger."

A Riot representative told PC Gamer that 27 developers on League of Legends are being laid off, along with five people in Riot's publishing business. The cuts come less than a year after Riot laid off 530 employees and closed its Riot Forge program, which it launched in 2019 to make singleplayer League of Legends games with external studios. 

CEO Dylan Jadeja said at the time that Riot had become "a company without a sharp enough focus" and with too many projects underway that weren't paying off, but added that "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. It's what we need to do in order to maintain a long-term focus for players."

The videogame industry has laid off thousands of developers since the beginning of 2023, as the heady "stay at home and play games" early days of the Covid-19 pandemic have waned. September 2024 alone saw cuts at studios including Mountaintop, Airship Syndicate, Evening Star, Microsoft, Midnight Society, Lost Boys Interactive, Ballistic Moon, and Rocksteady, while Hi-Rez Studios and Cryptic Studios have made layoffs in October.