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Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

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Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#71

Post by bcrosby95 »

goalonetwo wrote: post #57
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah to be honest, a half-year sabbatical with time to job hunt non-frantically is a luxury I've never had. I love my current job, but I would probably look at a half year severance like a vacation.

Sorry for the intrusive question but if you make software engineer level salary how is it that you don't have multiple months/years saved to mitigate for those possible layoffs? Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries? I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that softw…

I have 3 kids. My grocery bill alone is 2.5k/month.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#72

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

clovoak wrote: post #68
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #47

Every year Riot releases a new cinematic for League of Legends to celebrate the start of the season. Last year they released the worst cinematic in all of their history. This announcement makes me wonder if their sudden rapid growth was at least partially the reason for why they ended up shipping such a bad video. In the last year Riot also started to sell severely overpriced skins, despite a lot of outrage from the…

Got a link to the cinematic you mention? Haven't heard of it.

Sure! In order to set a bit of context...

First watch the 2022 cinematic [0], to get an idea of what they normally ship. Then watch the 2023 cinematic [1], to see how badly they messed up. And just to drive the point home, compare it with the 2024 cinematic [2] which is a return to form.

If you look at the 2023 cinematic in a vacuum it might seem generic and uninspired, but then when you compare it with the 2022 and 2024 cinematics the quality gap becomes apparent.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYqT0_9VR4

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJT5d5Ue3ao

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHhqwBwmRkI

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#74

Post by stevage »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #72
clovoak wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link to the cinematic you mention? Haven't heard of it.

Sure! In order to set a bit of context... First watch the 2022 cinematic [0], to get an idea of what they normally ship. Then watch the 2023 cinematic [1], to see how badly they messed up. And just to drive the point home, compare it with the 2024 cinematic [2] which is a return to form. If you look at the 2023 cinematic in a vacuum it might seem generic and uninspired, but then when you compare it with the 2022 and…

Wow, what a great post, thanks so much. I don't know a single thing about LoL but yeah, shipping what is essentially a single tracking shot through a pretty static environment vs the complex, choreographed scenes with characters fighting etc. Pretty big difference.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#76

Post by qqqwerty »

OnionBlender wrote: post #43
asylteltine wrote: post #24

Why is everyone doing layoffs at once? Is it just in the news now or are they taking advantage of everyone else doing it?

Probably don't want the bad PR from doing layoffs before Christmas.

FWIW, severance is usually a lump sum, so it absolutely benefits the employees to wait until the new year because the severance will likely get taxed at a lower tax bracket.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#77

Post by jachee »

mlhpdx wrote: post #52
0xjmp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this current job market 6 months to next job is a very quick turnaround...

Can you explain? Unemployment is still very, very low and there are hundreds of thousand of open positions out there. Not sure about game companies, hence my asking.

I read an article about this recently, but can’t find it to officially cite it. However, the thrust was something like this:

Despite unemployment being low, the reality is that many of those “thousands of positions” are either geographically-distributed duplicates of the same position, eternally-open cattle calls, or open-but-basically-a-formality for either getting a visa or an internal move. This makes the number of actual openings quite opaque, yet much smaller than it appears.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#78

Post by jachee »

mdorazio wrote: post #75
stevage wrote: post #73

> This isn’t to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity. They don't seem to explain in any way why it's a necessity.

I read that as they have negative cash flow and need to fix it ASAP.

…in order to appease shareholders and/or hit earnings numbers, right?

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#79

Post by akira2501 »

asylteltine wrote: post #63
devjab wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy isn’t doing so well and it’s not going to correct itself any time soon. It’s not really that noticeable on the larger scale but any company that produces anything non-digital is still having supply line issues. Not as bad as a few years ago, but still bad enough to cost the global economy a lot of potential growth. Then there is the higher interest rates, which in themselves are an issue for the economy.…

Is the economy bad? Seems fine to me. In general a “bad economy” seems entirely made up. It’s not like the money just disappears. I think it’s a concept invented to facilitate wealth transfers.

> It’s not like the money just disappears.

Tencent has lost a lot of value in the past few months and has had a terrible year overall. The value has disappeared.

> I think it’s a concept invented to facilitate wealth transfers.

Well, if you transfer a bunch of wealth upwards, it's going to have negative consequences that travel downwards. Those who receive them may describe the economy as "bad." Which not only describes a current state, but probably mostly encodes their lack of hope for any type of future mobility that may change their circumstances.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#80

Post by kyrra »

jachee wrote: post #78
mdorazio wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that as they have negative cash flow and need to fix it ASAP.

…in order to appease shareholders and/or hit earnings numbers, right?

One possible reason is due to Section 174 tax issues. See: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/20/taxes-irs-startups-section1...
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