Riot Confirms Layoffs, 46 Jobs Cut

Credit: Riot Games

Riot Games confirmed with The Esports Advocate Thursday morning that it will lay off 46 employees. In a statement from Riot (the same one it issued to the Jacob Wolf Report this morning (Wolf broke the story Wednesday evening on social media), Riot said that these layoffs reflect the company’s normal course of business and a change in focus and in building better content.

“Riot Games implemented strategic shifts within a few teams to sharpen our focus in a number of areas. With these shifts, certain roles were eliminated, impacting a total of 46 Rioters,” a Riot representative wrote in a prepared statement. “This is part of our normal course of our business: We periodically make changes to our structure and our teams based on what we believe will allow us to deliver the best content and experiences for players.

“We never make these decisions lightly and will always start from a place of wanting to retain Rioters and have them focus on our highest priorities. While that’s not always possible, it’s our primary goal.”

A Riot spokesman also noted that Riot is looking to fill 150 open positions – a point several Riot employees made on Wednesday evening when people announced that they had been laid off from Microsoft and Halo maker 343 Industries.

Editor’s note we changed a typo – “Rito” to “Riot” after the story was published, though as one employee told us “That’s a running joke.”