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After last year saw over 9,000 layoffs in the video game industry<\/a>, 2024 is continuing the trend, and League of Legends<\/em> maker Riot Games is the latest example. On Monday night, the company announced<\/a> that \u201cwe are refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future,\u201d which means eliminating roles for 530 people globally, or about 11 percent of its total workforce. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Legends of Runeterra and Riot Forge cuts are part of the \u2018adjustments\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n CEO Dylan Jadeja said in a company-wide message<\/a>, \u201cSome of the significant investments we\u2019ve made aren\u2019t paying off the way we expected them to,\u201d and pointed to Riot\u2019s 10th-anniversary expansions in 2019<\/a> that spread the League of Legends<\/em> universe across new games and other forms of entertainment. For employees \u201cwhose role is or may be impacted,\u201d there will be a meeting with their relevant leads within the next 48 hours, and a minimum of six months of severance pay offered, with more for those who had been with the company longer, as well as other benefits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What Riot says it\u2019s prioritizing is the core live games it makes, like League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics,<\/em> and Wild Rift<\/em>, as well as esports and events tied to those titles. Similarly, the still-in-development Project L 2D fighting game with League <\/em>characters is said to be \u201cmaking great progress,\u201d and season two of its Arcane<\/em><\/a> <\/em>TV show for Netflix is on track to come out in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The projects directly affected by the changes include Legends of Runeterra<\/em>, the free-to-play card game announced in 2019 that Jadeja said \u201chasn\u2019t performed as well as we need it to.\u201d That team is being reduced and focused on the PvE game mode. The other target in Riot\u2019s current gaming portfolio is the Riot Forge publishing label, also announced in 2019<\/a>, to partner with smaller studios that would create more League-related titles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to Jadeja, the cuts aren\u2019t to appease investors, but instead, \u201cWe have to do more to focus our business and center our efforts on the things that drive the most player value \u2013 the things that are truly worth players\u2019 time.\u201d That won\u2019t undo the impact on those directly affected, however, or the chill spreading across the entire industry \u2014 a layoff tracker maintained by Kotaku<\/em><\/a> <\/em>counts over 3,800 jobs lost already in 2024, and it\u2019s still January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n