51 Facts About Riot Games

Riot Games, Inc is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California.

Riot Games' publishing arm, Riot Forge, oversees the production of League of Legends spin-offs by other developers.

Riot Games worked with Fortiche to release Arcane, a television series based on the League of Legends universe.

Riot Games operates 12 international League of Legends esports leagues, the League of Legends World Championship and the Valorant Champions Tour.

Riot Games, which had 24 offices worldwide as of 2018, sells corporate sponsorships, merchandise, and streaming rights for its leagues.

Related searches

Riot Games was criticized for its use of forced arbitration in response to these allegations.

Riot Games was established in September 2006 in Santa Monica, California.

The first person Riot Games recruited was Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, one of the early developers of DotA Allstars, a game considered to have been foundational to the MOBA genre.

In 2012, in response to toxicity and harassment in League of Legends, Riot Games launched a "player behavior team" of psychologists to combat harassment on its platform.

Riot Games relocated to a new building on a 20-acre campus in western Los Angeles in 2015.

In March 2016, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, another developer who was working on Rising Thunder and Stonehearth at the time.

In October 2019, Riot Games announced several new games: a version of League of Legends for mobile devices and consoles called League of Legends: Wild Rift, a standalone mobile version of the Teamfight Tactics mode from League of Legends, and the digital collectible card game titled Legends of Runeterra, with all three scheduled for a 2020 release.

Riot Games teased further games — Project A, a tactical shooter; Project L, a fighting game with League of Legends characters; and Project F, a multiplayer game set in Runeterra – that were not detailed outside of genre descriptions and brief gameplay clips.

In December 2019, Riot Games announced Riot Forge, a publishing label headed by Leanne Loombe.

Two titles from Riot Forge were announced at The Game Awards 2019: Ruined King: A League of Legends Story by Airship Syndicate, and Convergence: A League of Legends Story by Double Stallion Games.

Riot Games acquired Hypixel Studios in April 2020, which they had been investing in over the previous eighteen months to help them publish Hytale, a voxel-based sandbox game.

Riot Games Singapore is to support Riot's existing titles and will have a major focus on developing the company's newer titles.

Riot Games collaborated with French animation studio Fortiche to release an animated series, Arcane.

In March 2022, Riot Games announced that it had invested in Fortiche and, as a result, its chief content officer Brian Wright and director of corporate development Brendan Mulligan were joining Fortiche's board of directors.

In 2012, Riot Games held its tournament at University of Southern California's Galen Center, offering in prize money.

Riot Games has since held tournaments in Berlin, Seoul, Madison Square Garden in New York City, and the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

In 2017, Riot Games held the League of Legends World Championship in China, with the finals taking place in Beijing.

In November 2020, Riot Games announced the first Valorant Champions Tour, the global competitive tournament for Valorant.

The tournament initially excluded participant teams from India, though in April 2021 Riot Games expressed appreciation for the country's players and stated that they were considering options that would allow for India's involvement in the esport.

In July 2022, Riot games announced after three years of development, the company opened three of their Remote Broadcast Centers, Also known as "project Stryker".

Related searches

John Needham, President of Esports at Riot Games stated "The capabilities of Project Stryker put Riot in prime position to deliver on the goal of bringing joy to billions of esports fans around the world".

In October 2016, Riot Games released Mechs vs Minions, a cooperative tabletop game based on League of Legends.

Some Riot Games employees approached by Kotaku asserted these accusations were not true or were already being addressed; for example, according to the head of the platform, Oksana Kubushyna, efforts to improve the hiring process to be more diverse and inclusive toward women started nine months before article's publication.

Riot Games elaborated that, in regards to claims of misbehavior by higher-level executives at Riot, the seniority of the individuals would have no impact on disciplinary proceedings.

Two employees of Riot Games attempted to address the feedback from the PAX event; one was fired, and the other left the company.

Riot Games stated that these departures were separate from their Diversity Initiative.

Riot Games stated to Kotaku that there still other cases they were investigating but did not involve those as senior as Gelb, and thus would not discuss these cases publicly.

About three months after Kotakus story, one current and one former Riot Games employee filed a lawsuit against the company, asserting the company engaged in gender discrimination concerning their pay and position, and that the company had created a "sexually-hostile" workplace.

Riot Games attempted to have two of the suits dismissed in April 2019, citing that the two female plaintiffs of these suits, when hired, had agreed to third-party arbitration rather than taking court action.

Internally, several employees of Riot Games threatened to walk out, an idea that had been around since the first Kotaku article, as alongside the coercion to use arbitration, these employees felt Riot Games had yet to improve its transparency on the processes and had otherwise continued to retain Gelb despite his suspension.

Representatives of the class indicated that they thought it would lead to change, while Riot Games said that there were other issues not covered by the suit, and that they intended to resolve the unacknowledged issues.

In June 2019, DFEH announced that Riot Games had denied providing them requested documents and were seeking action to compel these documents, though Riot Games responded by saying that they complied with all DFEH requests.

Riot Games dismissed the DFEH's larger value to the suit, and denied charges raised by the DFEH that it had colluded with the class's lawyer to reduce the amount they would pay through the settlement.

Riot Games opened an investigation by three members of its board of directors into Laurent's behavior in response to the lawsuit.

Riot Games has been criticized by its employees for requiring the use of forced arbitration in its employment contracts as a result of the gender discrimination lawsuit.

Riot Games allowed employees to speak anonymously with the press, and indicated their intent to use town hall meetings and smaller group discussions with Roseboro and employees to determine future action.

Riot Games committed to removing mandatory arbitration in new employee contracts and potentially for existing ones after the current litigation had been settled.

Additionally, Riot Games established a 90-day plan starting in May 2019 to continue to address internal issues related to diversity and inclusion.

About two weeks following the walkout, Riot Games reverted their position, saying that they will not change forced arbitration in existing agreements while the current litigation against the company is ongoing.

Riot Games subsequently placed Johnson on leave to conduct an investigation, after which Johnson resigned from the company.

Related searches

Riot Games had announced a planned partnership with the developing city of Neom in Saudi Arabia in July 2020, with the city to sponsor the upcoming League of Legends European Championship series.

Shortly after the announcement, fans of the game, as well as Riot Games employees, criticized the company over social media and their streaming channels over the partnership, citing Saudi Arabia's record on human rights and the violent attempts to evict the Howeitat tribe from the area during the city's construction.

Riot Games canceled the partnership within a few days in response, apologizing and saying that the partnership had been rushed.

Riot Games was criticized for marketing a new League of Legends character by creating an in-character Twitter account in which they alluded to her struggles with her mental health, including low self-esteem, anxiety, and impostor syndrome.

Tencent, on behalf of Riot Games, then filed a new lawsuit in a Chinese court, which ruled in Tencent's favor in July 2018, awarding it in damages.

In October 2019, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Riot Squad Esports LLC, a Chicago-based esports organization founded in March 2019, alleging that Riot Squad intentionally infringed on Riot Games' "Riot" trademark.