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Riot Games is laying off about 530 employees, which represents 11% of its workforce, the Tencent-owned company announced<\/a> on Monday. The League of Legends maker is also sunsetting its five-year-old publishing group, Riot Forge.<\/p>\n Riot Games wrote two posts about the changes, addressing the affected employees<\/a> in one and its players<\/a> in another. The former included details about a severance package, among other benefits like access to job placement services, counseling, visa support, as well as new laptops to replace their work computers if they don\u2019t own one. The teams who were most affected were outside of core development.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way around the fact that this is an extremely sad moment,\u201d wrote CEO Dylan Jadeja. \u201cFor those who are leaving\u2026 I want to reiterate, we are deeply sorry for the impact this has on you and your family. I can\u2019t thank you enough for everything you\u2019ve done for Riot, and for your dedication to players. We\u2019re committed to doing our best to support you in this moment and through this transition.\u201d<\/p>\n The note to players shares a similar sentiment, saying the layoffs were unavoidable yet necessary. \u201cThis isn\u2019t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number\u2014it\u2019s a necessity,\u201d Jadeja said.<\/p>\n He also highlighted two areas that\u2019ll see \u201cimmediate impact\u201d from the organizational changes\u2013 Riot Forge and the digital collectible card game Legends of Runeterra.<\/p>\n Riot Forge launched in 2019 to partner with various independent developers to create new League of Legends stories. The publishing label released five games in total, including Convergence, Hextech Mayhem, The Mageseeker, Ruined King and Song of Nunu. This year, Riot Forge is set to roll out a sixth game titled Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story, which features a storyline about Yordles. Riot Forge will officially shut down after the game is released on Nintendo Switch and PC.<\/p>\n While Legends of Runeterra isn\u2019t shutting down, Jadeja admits it isn\u2019t performing as well as the company hoped. Riot Games will reduce the size of the team and focus on improving its single-player (PvE) adventure mode, the \u201cPath of Champions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the significant investments we\u2019ve made aren\u2019t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they\u2019re unsustainable, and we\u2019ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure \u2013 which is vital to a creative company like ours. All of this puts the core of our business at risk,\u201d Jadeja added.<\/p>\n Riot Games joins other video game publishers making job cuts, such as Epic Games<\/a>, which eliminated 830 employees in September. Other companies include Ubisoft<\/a>, Electronic Arts<\/a>, Activision Blizzard<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n