Riot Have Aborted Their Plan
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2024
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Riot is changing direction, cancelling multiple projects, and implementing job cuts across their organisation.
Sources:
www.riotgames.com/en/news/202...
www.pcgamer.com/riot-games-la...
www.riotgames.com/en/news/202...
www.riotgames.com/en/news/cal...
x.com/riot_llama/status/17496...
x.com/Riotswimbananas/status/...
x.com/jasonschreier/status/17...
x.com/Ghostcrawler/status/174...
x.com/ttwisted35/status/17495... - เกม
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Why the change in the video title and the thumbnail? Before it said that the plan failed and workers paid the price, now it does not imply that.
Crazy you bring up the whole AI is bad for art argument in your videos - but have no problem promoting something and talking about their AI as a selling point (also putting people out of jobs, just programmers not artists). I am pro-AI myself. just find it odd the disconnect
"Im accountable .... so we gonna fire YOU" Ahh the corpo talk we all love.
😆Nicely pointed out. He's just using the buzzword "accountable" without doing anything about it. And some people are eating it up.
yep. accountable in that he was the one breaking the news, not in trying to reduce the layoffs.
And yet, when everyone pointed out the diversity hiring practices... you all said WE were the problem for pointing it out. Now they are all getting fired, the companies don't care... and you are just now learning this. Now, what, you are on our side??
yeah lets just ignore the fact that they are giving them 6 months salary plus a 1k bonus, plus healthcare for those 6 months, plus re employment assistance, plus the ability to continue to use company benefits for those 6 months. the accountability was that massive amount of money they are allocating to those affected. People act like layoffs are something a company can just choose to not do if they really feel like it. They made a business venture to try and expand their ips, it didn't pan out and now they have expanded to a size that isnt sustainable. Why should they just continue to hemorrhage revenue forever and ever as if those they hired were promise a job for life? No one is claiming this is a good thing or that those affected should be happy. But people irrationally demonize layoffs like its morally wrong to do it.
son we are a family that is going truw financial difficulties so heu.....how do you feel about adoption?
As a former citizen of the German Democratic Republic, I am utterly not surprised to see a Five-Year plan fail.
😭😭
💀💀💀
This applies to any former communist block country.
Username checks out.
EXACTLY!!!!!!! WHAT THEY REALLY NEEDED WAS A """"6 YEAR PLAN""""!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT WOULD HAVE DONE THE TRICK!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!! :D :D
It's time we stopped assuming that people in the c-suite are competent. It's never been my experience. But, they get all the money and get to continue to make terrible decisions over and over again without consquences.
They are competent
it's their company , Riot forge did not made enough money in 5 year , keep them there and waste money? if you were ceo of your company would you keep em>?
They r just people too there are competent ones and incompetent ones there are good ones and evil ones there are nice ones and cruel ones just like if u look at any other subsection of society.
It does not matter which industry, or company it is. Employees will always be the ones that pay for the management mistakes of executives. Also, nobody should be surprised when they hear about layoffs or "right sizing" anymore, it should be expected. 2024 is gonna be painful for game devs, so is 2025.
Ah yes, changing the name of "downsizing" so it doesn't too negative. Another typical corporate spin too, that you see often.
We need to start holding execs responsible for their failures.
Can't wait til they start calling it "Fun Sizing..."
Project: Fails
Employees: Fired
Upper management: Gets promoted to a higher position
@burnttoast26 kinda hard to hold the guys paying you responsible for their failures. Part of working for a private business
So many companies seem to think "expand or die" when it's the expansion that often kills them.
Unfortunately without expanding they lose investor support. I don't like it either,but if a public company doesn't seek every opportunity for profit then they are neglecting their "fiduciary duty" to those shareholders.
@@ajbXYZcool That's the problem with investment crapitalism and why it needs to go.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart Right nobody should be allowed to buy stocks or share in ownership of companies they all must be owned by monolithic god men who are above us peasants.
When I worked at SEGA on a zero hour contract it was clear we were expendable. 3 months of work, then "go find some other job, we'll call you if we want you back". Now even staff with full time contracts can be disposed of as profits demand. You'll never see any of these kinds of studios make any sacrifices for the staff. I don't understand how anyone can subject themselves to this industry when there's clearly no consideration for the people any more, not even any loyalty to legacy staff. I'd think twice the next time these chump companies are hiring again.
Translation of CEO speak: We F’d up, and instead of the top taking a pay cut, we are passing that unto you, our loyal employees who we owe almost everything to, suck it noobs.
It is always like this sadly.
No, the bottom failed by not meeting deadlines and complaining about pronouns and not enough breaks even tho getting paid 150k per year.
So basically, a normal LoL match... but its the company.
@@Riftmaker17 stop doing drugs the bottom doesnt make 100k+ a year in any industry
@@jimecherry they do, even if you dont think that they are getting loads of money and benefit people with less than 2 years experience get paid above 80$k they should either do their job or leave. This is the reason why when you go to a restaurant you expect good food to be served but if you keep serving shit food over and over you dont blame the owner of the restoraunt you blame the cook who is making it. You cant expect to lie on the cv and not get fired if you are not up to standard...
You should use "pulling a Kotick" any time a CEO does staffing cuts while talking about record profits.
It should also be mentioned that Tencent has been hit hard by videogame regulations in China. Than probably has something to do with this.
Tencent probably returned to normal after the government official who was responsible for the proposal of curbing in game spending and psychological ways to keep players in was removed from the position and his plans revoked.
Last news i have is that china revoke the regulation, i think i read it yesterday
@@konradzukowski213tbh, that proposal look good for people but not game companies
@@xenxx1192 Yeah, the mere mention of it did cost Tencent and Netease 80 billion $ on their shares value.
When you point out it's "DEFINETLY NOT ABOUT EARNINGS AND BONUSES" - That is absolutely what its about. None of the C-Suite took a pay cut, so they can kick rocks.
yeah i straight up dont get bellular, sometimes he just says such dumb shit i dont even know how to interpret it
@@_holy__ghost He is just reading the news... It was said by the CEO... which is why I even more suspect of the statement.
Bell does good work 9/10 times... Better than most news :D
As a game QA, I hate hearing about layoffs, cause QA is the first or one of the first on the chopping block
And then the next game is even worse because of it.
Larian studios : build, QA, fix, repeat
Other studios : QA is an obvious drain on our profits because it doesn't generate revenue..
In a completely different field than you are (support) I know the shpeel. It doesn't generate revenue, but it helps prevent churn.
@@ferinzz QA does actually generate revenue, if you look past the very short term. But you're right, what you describe is how a lot of spreadsheet managers think.
All im seeing with all these corporate layoffs is management needs go be paid less because there is just less risk inherent in their jobs. If things dont work out lower level employees will take the brunt of the "punishment". So, pay needs to be adjusted to reflect the risk of the job.
Isnt management the job with the biggest risk, the bad decision managet makes could tank the company.
@@gaddag1477 or they'll just cut 500 people out of a job to recover. Or better yet if the company folds they get a nice bankruptcy golden parachute while everyone else is out on their butts with nothing.
@@gaddag1477 Then you fire management, not the rest of the employees.
@@TylorHuebner Eh I dont even know if i should reply to this or if you even care to look at it from upper management perspective point of view.
@@gaddag1477 I won't stop you from expressing your opinion
The shortsightedness of executives is why the younger generations are so vehemently against them. Anyone with a functioning brain would realize that when people aren't stuck at home, video games profits would sink.
Employees at riot should've bargained for being unable to be fired if the plan backfired.
As someone who works in this field and saw lots of co-workers leave for the ridiculous amounts of money that was being offered during that time and warning them it wasn't going to last because I'd seen this happen in the 08 recession just to be ignored, and then have watch them be laid off because they were way over paid... some, not all, but some of those workers have responsibility in this by choosing to leave stable jobs for short term, but high risk reward/jobs. It may however pay off for them in the long run having these kinds of studios on their resumes, but there are a lot of people looking for jobs and no where near the number of jobs available to absorb them now, especially at the pay they were making.
@@BlindJudgement I disagree with the blame even partially being on the employees. It is within the employees rights to request the most money they can for their services. Just as it is well within the company's right to try to lower that cost as much as they reasonably can. It is on the company to ensure they are able to maintain a fruitful relationship between their employees and the business they enable. If the companies couldn't afford the costs (which anyone with a greater than immediate foresight capacity could), then they shouldn't have accepted the offers the employees gave.
Anyone with half a functioning brain could see that the pandemic wouldn't last forever (as no pandemic has in the past). Either the world would be wiped out (unprecidented, but if it happened then profits would be meaningless), or it would end, people would leave the house and return to work, and there would be less people sitting at home spending money on online purchases. Either way, It is the company's responsibility to maintain profitability, and they failed to do so. That isn't on the employee, who simply gave an offer for their labor. It's on the fools that accepted it.
@@ibukondo3657 I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but there are employees who would jump jobs every 2-3 months during that time and that was entirely on the employees decision, yes companies were dumb to be offering so much in the first place and I 100% agree with you on that fact, but like you said about companies having foresight, so should the employees.
We were working with outside recruiters to find replacements during that time, and those recruiters were pushing us to do the same with our rates to be competitive and we declined because it wasn't sustainable. It was a very difficult time to hire talent for companies that were smart and didn't play into the nutty rates. Some companies were losing so many employees, because of this behavior from employees to jump jobs so quick, that they had to raise their rates or go out of business due to not being able to complete work. Thus creating more of that terrible feedback loop of increasing rates, people jumping jobs, rinse and repeat. This all is the terrible but natural outcome of all that and neither party, employee or employer, should be surprised about it.
Ultimately while I agree it's natural for the employee to do what's in their best interest, but best interest is so much more than your paycheck total. What good does it do to get paid all that money for what, three years at best? To then have to change careers, with a massive pay cut, when you are part of the unfortunate mass layoffs. I could make more elsewhere, but it wouldn't be stable and as someone with over 20 years in the industry now, I'm so much further ahead in non career related goals than most of the people I graduated college with because I've been employed non-stop for that entire time while they jumped too often, too quick, and found themselves unemployable and had to change careers.
Especially because the profits margins have actually been on the raise for a while (not just Riot, most companies out there). It's just pure greed. Increasing the profit at all cost while reducing the spending. In a couple of months rest assured they will hire all these positions again at a much lower rate, since it'll become the "standard". Companies legit just manipulate the market to increse demand and lower salaries
@@ibukondo3657 nah, he's right. both have responsibility. they gambled on whether or not they would keep the new jobs at higher pay, and quite a few lost.
Just seems the typical process of the workers getting the cut instead of the leadership screwing up
The standard for managing these situations was set by Satoru Iwata.
And hopefully CEO's will stop this "hard sell" bullshit to their employees. They are there to do a job and get paid, not sign onto a cult dedicated to the enrichment of the company (AKA Our Customers(TM)).
I think you mean OUR ESTEEMED AND INVALUABLE SHAREHOLDERS
So leadership has failed miserably but yet no leadership changes are being made.. of course.. that is totally logical..
I'd be very very very careful ever aspiring a position as a game dev, where ever you are....
How do you replace a CEO you already replaced?
Just like back in the country were I grew up, namely the GDR. We had a whole economy based on Five-Year plans. And they regularly failed, but all kinds of people got punished, including a whole people which had to live in and deal with the resulting scarcity economy, but _never_ the people responsible for this mess. They sat in Wandlitz, the completely closed-off secret estate for the members of the Politbüro, and got everything us normal citizens never even got to see, from bananas over japanese tv sets to western cars, delivered directly to them whenever they wanted.
@@rrc3theres other positions in a company besides 'CEO' and 'low-level grunt'
It's honestly extremely frustrating seeing these incredible works by amazing artists and developers suffer because of bad leadership. It's thanks to stuff like LoR and the incredible work writers put into short stories surrounding this world and characters that things like Arcane exist, the only thing Riot needs to do is put more attention on these things, I bet you a bunch of people don't even know LoR exists, or the Ruined King RPG, or Convrgence or Mageseeker, there's no effort from Riot to market or advertise these things to wider audiences and yet they severely punish them when they, obviously, end up failing. Absolutely incompetent and awful.
Imma ask you something tho, do you truly believe that even if Riot did advertise The Ruined King more (meaning spending even more money) that the turn based game would bring enough people to the game it would be worth it? Riot knew that their main audience will be well...League players ofc...so they aimed at them the most and dont get me wrong, all of the games released by Riot Forge or LoR was at the end of the day amazing.
All of them having the least score of 8/10, most of the time higher. But unfortunately, most League players just play League OR Valorant. They are fast and dynamic games unlike LoR or other games by Riot Forge. It is a shame but that is the reality. Riot themselves said (and even all the TH-camrs that werent on the inside of company throughout the years) that LoR cant be making enough money. Riot was basically pumping money into it and getting barelly anything back except good reviews from people. Like it or not, Riot and any other game company is still a business. Yes, call me a devil's advocate but Riot gave us very good games and branched out from their one main game, maybe a bit too much without experience. They had to try what works and what doesnt and clearly they learned that this is not the way to go.
Yes, employees will suffer at the end of the day, but Riot is really giving them a pretty good deal by basically paying minimum of half a year salary and all the other stuff mentioned in the public letter. Also games from Riot Forge were basically mostly made by indie game companies, Riot basically just said they won't focus on those anymore, there still might be some released some day tho, just not in multiple titles. Blizzard and other big gaming companies when they laid off employees after Covid basically gave nothing to those affected.
It was a mistake of Riot to hire twice the number of their employees they had in 2019 over Covid. However they werent alone, any gaming company, any IT company, any company that has most of their employees working with PC basically hired as much as possible because most jobs required working from home or from PC. After Covid, as sad as it is, those jobs positions arent as needed as before and companies cant support employees that arent as profitable. I had to say goodbye to one such company myself 2 years back. It is the nature of management and how world economy shifts around.
@@mikedoge5559the covid bubble really make too many aaa game companies too overconfident. just like how embracer group being too overconfident putting too much eggs on their 2billion$ cancelled deal with savvy games group.
i wish riot put more effort in exploring runeterran character stories like what they've done with the ruined king game, arcane tv series and many spin offs. they could explore more creative profitable sales methods with those spinoffs instead of just endlessly exploiting profits from esports communities like how the retconned summoners' institute abusing runeterran champions with endless gladiator deathmatches.
@kukuhimanputraraharja8084
Doesn't really matter how bad it sounds, but in truth they did what they were supposed to do. Stuff didn't work out - didn't bring enough profit and thus they severed unprofitable part before it started to harm company too much.
Talks about LoR being put on life support are there for the same reason. It is too, unprofitable. Too f2p friendly for ccg game. But still supported as pretty much biggest "lore game".
Except LoR is still a main game.
They tried exploring with indie devs in Riot Forge, but it seems to suffer the same fate as LoR. - being unprofitable. Except those games have overall less lore potential in comparison to live service game like LoR that can be updated again and again.
On a sidenote MMORPGs usually are a massive black holes thst suck money for development like crazy.
Fighting game is around the corner.
Isometric action game potentially still in the works.
Hytale is still in development and considering the scope of the work - might be a massive money sink too.
It reached a point where even their main league game suffered (from some dev posts and such there were lots of problems with not enough people in teams, stretching of resources and even situation where devs argued with higher ups so that they will give them budget for a few new voicelines for champions. Although that was around second half of 2022 if I remember correctly.)
Point is - they ve tried multiple times to monetize and share lore. Games, comix, book, Arcane, LoR, tabletop game. All good, with high enough scores, reviews, etc.
And almost all of it didn't paid off. And not simply didn't payed off, it threatened their core projects.
But people voted with their money. Sure, community can scream about how it isn't what they want, but the ones who actually voted - proved that "esports and skins" is the way to go for riot. At least for now.
Yup. I had no clue these games existed. I knew of LoL and Valorant and possibly a card game I can't name, that's it. No game I'd ever be interested in. Did they have a single-player RPG? Because that's what I want. Or any single-player/coop game with lots of lore, really. From your post and the video it looks like they did have some, so why have I never heard of them? I heard of an MMORPG (due some time between 2030 and 2060, of course) that I was hyped for, but hearing they're dropping the narrative projects doesn't bode well.
@@zenixvampirchik652 Exactly...as much as community cries for more lore and more of these small games...how many of those people ACTUALLY contributed and bought those games.
From Ruined king sales, it wasnt much. People want company to make more of these small games, but then only watch those games being played by streamers and youtubers...giving it a good review is one thing but supporting with your wallet is also half of the contribution.
So... how many companies thought the freak event known as 2020-2022 was an infinite gain machine at this point? It's starting to get ridiculous...
Easy to say today, but the majority fell in line like sheep for 2 years. It wasn't until the focus went to Ukraine that the whole lockdown thing changed.
Layoffs in the games industry everywhere. What can we even do as consumers? Especially me who doesn't buy LoL skins anymore. It shouldn't be required like the customer is a charity handout...
Dont play their games, do not talk about their games, don't watch their show, etc. Just dont consume their shit. But people can comment here all day and say how terrible this is and shame on riot. Then will gladly go right back to playing League or hyped for the next season of Arcane.
@@Chaogod1233no offense bro but batman himself couldnt stop me from being hyped for arcane
@@_holy__ghost That's fine. Just don't pretend you care about the lay offs. That's all I mean is people pretending they care about these people then consume whatever that same company puts out.
@@Chaogod1233 both things can be true, genius. i can be upset about the layoffs while still appreciating the art that those people contributed to the company. i played LoR for two years and have been gutted by the fact the game is now run by a skeleton crew. ive uninstalled it since then and went back to slay the spire, but lets be real. me uninstalling LoR doesnt do shit, just like me not being hyped for arcane wouldnt do shit. there are things that im willing to part with and things i am not willing to part with. why should fortiche (the french studio behind arcane that (afaik) didnt even suffer any layoffs) get lower ratings for s2 just because the company they partnered with mismanaged 2 unrelated spinoff projects? get real
Let’s be honest, hiring people based on diversity checkboxes over talent is causing major loss in US companies.
It's wild to think that over 500 people are ONLY 10% of a devs whole staff when some of the absolute most incredible games ever made were with less than half of that number total O.o
??? They are spread across multiple different projects.
You know Riot doesn’t make one game right?
5000 employees is not unusual for a super large company like RIOT.
this includes a lot of things, such as social media managers and customer support. not everyone layed off was a developer. I just hoped they would be honest and not write some bs about "this is not about shareholders", like bruh, people are not THAT dumb.
there have been amazing games made by like 1 or 2 people.
Theyre working on like 10 games, man
As a fan of LoR this announcement really sucked for two reasons, the cut back will very likely lead to LoR going to maintenance mode.
And the second reason is because they made this decision due to a lack of profit, and they never even tried to make it profitable, The community has been begging the dev for more monetization so we can support the game, and they did next to nothing.
All they did was make a rotating store for legacy content which they messed up the first time and had to redo, and the best items you can get from the store has only 1 slot that refreshes once a month, making the whole thing basically pointless.
They’ve done absolutely nothing to improve the games profits and now the game will die because of their stupidity.
10:18 I have never seen a cut this noticeable visually but imperceptible audibly.
For me the LoR announcement was heart breaking. The way they communicated it, basically blaming the community after we spent 3 years begging for more monetization.... I lost hope in this company
Probably because Of Hytale's fault
I wrote several notes of feedback saying that I and likely others would happily buy Battlepass cosmetics after a fair exclusivity period in the store at some reasonable markup after "missing out." It's easy no-brainer things like that which weren't done to avoid this fate that really make me scratch my head.
>begging for monetization
Bruh
@@Azazel226 That is so often the case by now and in a way, it's downright schizophrenic. Apparently those corpos want our money, but then again, they apparently don't actually want it. Take YT for instance and their war against ad-blockers. It is absolutely their right to not want people on their platform who don't make them money, I understand that. And I would actually pay one or two Euro per month in order to get an ad-free experience, while I don't need any 'premium' memberships or any other kind of BS.
But nope, they want to sell you the whole damn package, which would mean throwing money down the rathole for me. But since the way YT handles ads is complete madness, I fall back to using an ad-blocker again. So they rather _don't_ make money with their stupid premium memberships instead of making tons of money with actually sold inexpensive 'no ads' subscriptions. I have given up on trying to understand that. All I _do_ understand is that greed is a hell of a drug, apparently.
@@rumblepuss8848that is my reaction as well😂
Six months severance pay is still better than most jobs. Seriously, I think they're going to be fine.
Ive never seen these other riot games advertised. I mean i only knew about the pirate rpg because my favorite artist did concept art for the game.
They were in the client for like a week, they had music/remixes dedicated to them, even had missions that rewarded cosmetics related to them. People did know those games existed, they just didn't care.
@@valmiro4164 as someone who kicked his leage habit a year ago (thank the gods) this cheap way of advertising doesn't reach me ever. Along with everyone else who likes the league universe but doesn't care for league (or valorant)
Edit: but that is a cool way to tie in their new games for the people that play league
@@Slyslug Do you seriously think spending even more money on advertising to reach out to a few people would somehow make it profitable? They reached out to one of the biggest gaming communities and undoubtedly the people who should care about those games the most and the still failed, why would they spend even more money to advertise to the general public who'd probably care less? And if you really cared as much as you're claiming, you'd have seen the trailers because you'd be subscribed to their channel.
@@valmiro4164 i literally think any advertising would be more beneficial than what is essentially none, yes. Their community, league players, only play league, so advertising to them is a waste of time. I hardly think any of this is up for debate. I did in fact purchase the one extended league universe game (?) i knew about and it was extremely good, sod off with your angry accusatory BS.
@@Slyslug lmao even Greg Street, the previous Rioter who was mentioned here, defended the limited advertisement Forge got saying it's the most expensive part of the game. It's the same in the TV and Movie industry where it typically doubles the cost of production. Again, why should they risk doubling the cost to produce a game when there's very no guarantee it would profit?
It is pretty funny (and sad) how everyone was applauding Riot a few years ago for how well they pay their staff and now those salaries are the reason all these people are being let go. Kind of ironic.
I hope we at least see the MMO , I've been hoping for it from the early days of League
That really sucks for the employees having it out on social media before they know if they are personally staying or not. There 100% is a better way to do that. At least they are keeping some of the employment perks going, could be worse, but I personally would always prefer to know instantly
On alternate game modes, in Magic the Gathering, Standard is now one of the less popular formats, with a lot of people enjoying fan created format Commander
These companies would rather get rid of talent and their workforce than their execs to take a pay cut
ty for upload great presenting in this one!
Yeah, the email notice for layoffs sucks. But it's better than finding a "toe tag" used to identify dead bodies hanging in your locker. (See the movie Major League for that reference.) Still sucks that management couldn't plan hirings and staff wages properly in the first place to avoid this.
"Shit! I've been cut already?" - Willie Mays Hayes
Maybe this isn't the case of those being let go, but I know a couple devs one at Blizzard and one at Activision, both have stated when drunk, that they do probably 2-3 hours of actual work a day. They still have their jobs...
The plan for arcane to spur interest into their ecosystem of games not working essentially meant they now have several projects that lose money
Riot and Riot Forge shot themselves in the foot because the game prices were closer to 'premium' for what are normally 15-20$ titles.
Having been on the pink slip side of this several times in my time in an IT career of 20+ years, the 'evil' tell is when the Corpos saying all the rah-rah stuff as the pink slips go out don't suffer. It is RARE to see a CEO take a massive cut rather than impact the people who make things possible. In this case, the list of people out the door...weren't the execs.
Runeterra was the best thing they had going for them, i am sure they wont cancel the updates entirely but the card, cosmetics and game modes are taking a lot longer now...
11% is nothing. its likely due to LESS PLAYERS, alongside the tech industry waking over the past couple years that they have some lazy, do nothing, dead weight, employees that are 1+ overdue for the unemployment line.
Riot also aborted Radiant Entertainment. The company that made the early access game StoneHearth. A great game that was funded through a crowdfunding effort and left incomplete. But no one talks about this do they?
As a buddy of mine once told a few of riots execs when he met them at an event/meeting after, they should have invested in setting up mostly remote work studios in low cost of living locations, they could have paid a fraction as much and had people living as well or better in much of this country, and even if the company just covered internet costs they could work out a good deal with whatever provider is in the area that can offer acceptable service..
he told them this because its what his company did for in house app dev a few years earlier and its still working out great, they have a full office but its only used when they need to have face time, and that was true years before covid, the cost of the building in the location is minimal, housing is far cheaper then where their corp main offices are in cities like LA, SF, Seattle, etc... that despite all their horrific problems.. like human poo in the streets.. have insane cost of living.. and rental costs... for what the company would spent on 1.37 years of rent in SF today he says they could buy the office building they are using where he lives... its that crazy.. and this is similar size buildings... cost of power/water/etc are all also WAY lower... there are alot of places like that...
and more people who would be willing if not happy to move to a smaller community rather then a huge city... his company did this for a new team they setup as a sub of the main company specifically to dev some software for a govt contract that had turned into a general use project the govt wanted a customized version of but also wants to see used by more doctors and clinics.
It would seem Riot have aborted some plans so others will succeed. I don’t really see why this is different from any other business. They over hired when things were going well and cut back when it was unsustainable. They are still invested in several major projects that have seen no pay offs.
I think the issue is they just made games that were essentially other games but with riot art. The reviews for everything were that the games were ok and cute. I think you were a little lenient in your criticism of how the games actually turned out, and these losses are real
The fact that game changers stayed alongside the VCT when it was a completely sinking cost baffles me. Also i wonder how this affected Hytale
This is happening everywhere because a lot of places over hired due to COVID and the home restrictions.
I hate the word "layoff" can we change it to "destroyed the lives of for minor profit margins."
This was essentially a case of spending too much money at once and now screwing themselves.
i cant imagine getting a job at RIOT and being worried about lay offs. Thats insane.
Tell me we are in the Second Videogame Crash without telling me we are in the Second Videogame Crash!
Eh it’s only 11% of their global work force so when you put it that way it’s not that much. It’s prolly just getting rid of people that either are on projects finished and or projects scrapped.
I mean, their strategy failed and they're course correcting, sounds like responsible business decision. It's devastating for the people laid off, but if this was needed to keep the other 90% of staff with a job then isn't it a good decision?
I feel like the responsible decision isn't to launch a fucking "5 year plan" with insane targets.
As someone who's been playing riot games and watching their business decisions for years - you can't believe a word out of their mouths. They're more than happy to lie to and exploit both employees and customers. Interesting how we're hearing about people getting fired across so many departments... except c-suite.
@@rumblepuss8848 But then they wouldn't have hired a ton of people, so yeah maybe you wouldn't have to fire them but at least they where employed for some years.
Aggressive/hard to reach goals push you much more than conservative ones, I don't really see much issue with it.
an ARGP with build on mechanics from odyssey/star guardian is all people really want for spin-offs. ruined king was a good turn based rpg, but like the rest of riot forge. SHOULD BE HALD THE PRICE.
tbh this cut isn't as bad as it sounds. they tried to capitalize on their IP with many different projects. didn't cancel halfway and no big scandals from contracted teams that did the work for forge. these projects just didn't do as well as they hoped, so they cut future production and are back focusing on their main money maker.
from what i saw on layoffs, lot of lore/writing people got cut. which makes sense....they already have so much fleshed out they just need to storyboard something.
Everyone that knew anything knew that most economies around the world were hitting inflation if they hadn't already. In good times you bank for bad, especially if investors are happy at the moment. It was crap management(as usual) that chose not to read the room. And they almost never pay for it.
does this have anything to do with the face that the Chinese changed their loot box, pay mechanics and they see they are not going to fist the dollars any more on that market?
Riot just learned the hard way that in times of plenty, Staff enititlements should be the last place you should be making investments cause when the music stops everyone will still be wanting that chair whether you can afford it or not.
i know a lot of people who were excited for their fighting game and while it seems like it’s still coming out, if it has a reduced budget or reduced focus then originally planned, it’s probably not going to make the splash that everyone was thinking it might and cause F2p to become an industry standard for fighting games. some people really think that free to play is the future of fighting games but personally i’m not too keen on the idea myself, but perhaps project L could have changed my mind on that front.
What make you think it will have reduced budget or reduced focus?
People forgot how much of a piece of shit company Riot Games is because of Arcane being such a big success story. It’s nice of Riot games to remind people of that fact themselves.
They are hopefully learning a lot about best practices from their relationship with Hytale, assuming that goes well which it certainly looks like it is.
really want Hytale to go away
@@nicknevco215 Why? It's not even released in any capacity yet, do you hate the music and concept art that much?
Forgive me if I am wrong, but wasn't this always supposed to be a short term thing? Pretty sure they were only doing this for 2 years. They might be changes to the company, but they are planned changes. They are going to move onto the next part of their plan.
The guy made K'sante. He got what was coming to him. I'm joking of course... Strange that they'd touch people that close to their biggest cash cow.
I have a question. Isn't firing people via E-mail illegal? What I mean is there is a certain procedure a company must follow when mass firing. Such as having a staff meeting, letting people know in advance etc.
The Riot Forge stuff apart from Ruined King just never crossed my radar. I like Ruined King immensely.
Riot forge games are pretty high rated, all 80%+ on steam, I think the problem is they are all niche genres and people who don't play league likely skipped them even if they play those types of games, the price points might have also been an issue with all of them except one being 30 dollars.
When I played LOR I thought it was great, and it was outrageously good for free to play players. I assume that for a lot of card game players, spending money on boards and little pets is not a thing. Especially when the actual meat of the game, the cards, are so easily obtainable.
I know f2p game are a thing and some companies get crazy money for it. But it’s hard to be upset that they stop supporting a game where it’s not being “supported” by the community
I didn't play the game so I'm just speculating, but historically when a game is really F2P friendly, it's generally not going to be very profitable. There's a fine line that's tough for game devs to identify and walk, and a lot of times they fall too far over one side, either by being too predatory, or too generous.
@@OldManInternet I agree it’s a fine line. But some people are upset that they are cutting down on content. But if it changed its card acquisition model to be more pay intensive they would just get massive backlash. I guess what I think is that quality games shouldn’t be free. I know that is anti-a lot of gamers. But no financial support for any product, restaurant, home supply… etc causes loss of jobs and less product.
@@Djgrapejuice900 It's a shame, because by all accounts it is a fun game. I kind of got out of card games around when it took off, but it was one I was considering at the time. I would rather see a game fail for being too generous than being too greedy, but at the end of the day the result will be the same. Except the game that was too greedy might still have been a financial success, and encourage others to lean that way...
Feels like activision all over again “you mean I have to spend money to innovate and make a game? No way! You’re fired.”
Here I am, sitting at home thinking "Riot had such a great idea, I can't wait for them to start releasing all these indie games" and then I see this video?
What the hell! Why did nobody tell me that these games already exist?! WTF Riot!
The Day Before did a better advertisement job!
Companies want to scale up, keep expanding.
But there is a limit to how much one company can expand. You can't earn more money than your customers are capable of paying.
To be fair, I had NO IDEA about Riot Forge. I guess it's because I've done my best to avoid ads at all cost (YT premium, Ad Block, Don't watch Cable TV). Some of these games look pretty cool and I might actually check them out now. I have no interest in Valorant (I'd rather play CS than Valorant) or League (MOBAs aren't my thing) and I don't play mobile games and I'm not a fan of card games.
Hearing the CEO say this is all for the sake of the players is just so grating. As if those lazy hacks do anything for the players’ sake. Everything they do over there is for the sake of their own wallets or egos. The League balance team is out of touch, their art team is up their own ass, and their executives are busy figuring out how the other two can be exploited.
I mean...the playerbase were basically complaining about how Riot stopped paying attention to LoL last year. After a certain point, they've certainly met players expectations, whether it's in regards to the return of NB, new modes, regular updates, more transparent feedback etc. You can say they're lying, but there's visible change. Riot in the first half of 2023 and the latter half are almost 2 different companies, at least to LoL players. So him saying it's for the sake of players, while sounds like PR as it's coming from a CEO, realistically it lines up with their recent moves as well as plans for 2024.
We never talked like this in the 16-bit era did we?
back then games also weren't in development for several years at a time. they could get out a banger in about a year or 2.
your right all those et game developers made bank on nes
The reasons why I think Riot Forge failed are:
1. Desptie being part of well known IP, their marketing was terrible. I personally was shocked that some of those games released a year or two ago. I was still thinking they are in production.
2. Price tags were for mostly affected by IP they beloned to. If they hired a bunch of indie studios and said do what you want outside Leagues's IP and we sell it for normal prices. Nobody would complain and a lot of players outside of the League's community would pick them up. They cared about story and genre but ignored the fact that many of the League's players don't play those genres. Yes those games might be fun to play. But those price tags that usually associate games of that type are around half of what Riot Forge tried to sell them. Imagine Stardew Valley releasing now for $40-$50 but in leagues universe.... Nobody would touch that
I played League back in the early 2010s and it was obvious even back then that Riot was a dog chasing whatever trends were popular. If you thought this company was capable of a 5 year plan you were a sucker.
The business's goal is too risky. The attitude of "go big or go home" turns high profile companies such a minefield to work for. Anyone could make a 5-year plan, the issue is whether the company can afford to take on the bill for 5 years straight. I would say take multiple smaller games on the side as well.
There are some project phases don't need so many people, why not assign them to smaller project on the side? Experimental smaller games that able to recuperate small team's cost is a win-win. The designers learn overall process, and you don't need to lay off massive amount of people every time you have a hiccup, and you have creative exploration for future potential big title.
Lor never had the chance frankly, HS has also skins/amazing alt card art and promotions and things to buy its clear why it does a lot better, tft has super expensive skins 500 dollars etc so obv its going to make money where lor cant.
It's not quite being "daring but conservative". It is understanding the audience and where your product is at the time. Smaller projects are fun, but too many will lead to a drain if they do not hit the ground running.
And in this case, Riot has put their toes into a few too many ideas and not enough room to keep them going. It is very dumb on the management's part not to at least step up and see where everything was at before this point, as that might've saved some from this fate, but there's no shortage of ideas and material that needs refining somewhere.
My biggest thing is that despite being in a union company, I at least expect management to do something, ANYTHING, other than veing on the floor front end talking and not helping when we're being slammed. I would at least hope that these people wouldn't just avoid their workers for lack of money coming in. An email is all well and good but if what you said about internationally losing jobs is true, than this is a much worse problem
The next video on my feed:
Riot just accidentally broke Karthus
AAA absolutely should continue laying people off. It should be a ton, without notice, and leaving former employees devastated. The more it happens, the more people give offers from these companies a second thought.
"Do I trust this company to not fuck me?"
I sincerely hope that AAA do this to the point of making themselves an unattractive prospect. We need a talent drought in this space, if you are a developer go work for an indie or move to another industry.
Riot is an absolutely horrible company and I cannot imagine how awful it would be to work for them. They absolutely have far and away more than enough money to have changed directions without harming employees, but they just didn't give a shit. I don't think it's possible to make Riot a 'good' company, because its original executive staff were so 'toxic' that it's part of the fabric of the company. ¦ I find it virtually impossible to respect someone that says they cannot work from home. That's beyond pathetic.
Given how many companies that have been bankrupted trying to make a MMO....
who decided the pricing for the riot forge games is what I'd like to know.
If they aren't removing the job titles added in the past few years, it seems like a waste to me. Hate to see some good people losing their jobs for bad management/poor planning.
Not that surprising, the games weren’t pulling the numbers they needed to. I’m genuinely not surprised at all. They were beautiful games, they just didn’t do well. That’s ultimately the biggest tragedy here. We all got to witness the potential, but it just couldn’t go the distance.
I feel like Riot is so used that everyone knows about League of Legends, that they forgot how to promote games.
Like Convergence (the Ekko game) looks amazing, but this is the first time I hear about it, and it's in a video talking about Riot closing their 'indie' division.
Remember when Satoru Iwata took wage cuts so they would not lay off anyone? More CEO's and higher ups should be like that
except that actually makes sense in Japan where the avg wage is 150k, some >200-300k. I don't know how much Dylan earns, but I'm quite sure it's not going to save more than 10 people at best
Not surprising from a company that Doxxed their players to "protect" one player. Yes, I still play League sometimes. But I don't spend money on their games.
17:03 - It's probably the vast majority of it.....
Every large company has a 5 year plan, it gets rewritten every year, revised every qtr, reviewed every month and retired and then replaced with every new CEO.
Diverse hiring doesn´t work, you need to hire the best person for the job not based on skin color, gender, or sexuality (and whatever else they come up with) those things don´t get your untitled games out of the door within budget. That led to massive layoffs because everyone pays the price for your lag of skills, but hey at lease the yearly staff photo looks good... oh wait a lot of less people on it!
Line must go up. Long term gains must be sacrificed for short term returns. Definitely can't hurt quality or be the cause of why so many games fail these days.
them having a strict return to office policy is the shittiest thing. Employers who don't embrace remote work will lose their best talent to their competition that does.
I was workin in the Texas oil fields in 2015 when oil dropped below $20 a barrel. I managed to survive 3 rounds of lay-offs but watched as about 500k people disappeared from the industry. It sucks regardless, but lay-offa happen. At 40 years old, I have seen it over and over and over. Happens to every industry. It usually boils down to a major market correction, typically. All you can do is pick yourself up and move on. It is part of life.
how the hell is 530 is a lot of people but how is that considered as 11%?
My math is a bit hazy but I think that means they had somewhere around 4818 total people working there.
@@Ehh..... The fuck does 4k people do? I play both of their major games and trust me they don't need that many people.
@@praise_kek340 I dont know, I didnt hire them.
This doesn’t give me much confidence in the upcoming MMO.
Considering that Tencent lost Millions in China on the announcement of the new Gaming Laws in China I call BS on them not getting pressured by Tencent.
Of course no impact on exec positions or pay.
19:47 Because the excess of cash creates stupider and toxic decision-making for people.
Sad to see what happened to LoR, but those indie games were horrible. 4 years later and still no console release for Wild Rift. Really poor decisions from the top brass on where to focus their efforts.
Who needs voice actors and artists when you have AI generation.
Why was the HR department so large?