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Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

riotgames.com

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Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#131

Post by Jochim »

gambiting wrote: post #126
piva00 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is so standard in the USA , it's not the standard in any other place on Earth I worked at (Brazil, USA, Sweden). Even in Brazil you'd get at least a few months of severance.

That's literally all you get in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay To quote: "half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22 one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41 one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older Length of service is capped at 20 years." And also it's pretty shit because it's capped, so for most software devs it won't…

The UK has an awful standard living for how wealthy it is.

For example, if you happen to be classed as a "worker", rather than an employee, you do not have a legal right to leave work or take time off to care for a sick family member or pick a child up from school.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#132

Post by vsnf »

riffraff wrote: post #85
Blackthorn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ehh?? On the character models or splash arts? Splash arts generally. Almost every single one is wearing heels. Once you notice it you can't stop seeing it.

High heels are foot fetish? I thought it was about naked feet (e.g. all Tarantino movies). This is the first time I hear of liking heels as having a foot fetish.

What’s with the vilification of people with a foot fetish anyway? Seems like they’re always getting called out, ragged on, and otherwise treated as filth. Its just the human body, idk what the big deal is.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#133

Post by gambiting »

Jochim wrote: post #131
gambiting wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally all you get in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay To quote: "half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22 one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41 one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older Length of service is capped at 20 years." And also it's pretty shit because it's capped, so for most software devs it won't…

The UK has an awful standard living for how wealthy it is. For example, if you happen to be classed as a "worker", rather than an employee, you do not have a legal right to leave work or take time off to care for a sick family member or pick a child up from school.

Yep. And there are many many many other examples like this - for instance UK employee protections are quite good.....unless it's your first 2 years of employment. In which case you get almost nothing - within the first 2 years you can be let go without any reason, and it's not redundancy either so it doesn't trigger all kinds of protections - it's just "it's not working out, bye" - same as US, or worse actually in some ways.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#134

Post by dagmx »

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…

One thing to note is they used a different vendor than usual. In most recent cases, Unit Image do their cinematics, but weren’t the ones for your 2023 example.

Likely came together last minute and their preferred vendors weren’t available.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#135

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

mjr00 wrote: post #55
Blackthorn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does the game even have art directors? We know it has somebody with a foot fetish. Look at the footwear of all the female characters (at least the ones made before 2016, I haven't played it since then). I did try to watch some recent games and while it looks like the gameplay itself has improved since then, the effect visuals have somehow managed to get even more blended and difficult to read. How do they manage to…

> We know it has somebody with a foot fetish. Look at the footwear of all the female characters (at least the ones made before 2016, I haven't played it since then). ehh?? On the character models or splash arts? I've played for a long time and have never heard anyone else say this, outside of the French Maid Nidalee skin[0] which is obvious foot fetish bait. The most notable foot-related art commentary was always aro…

Briar splash art also features very prominent feet [0]. When it was first leaked a lot of the discourse around it was focused on the detailed feet.

[0] https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5vOzOP

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#136

Post by tech-code-build »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #17
smt88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block. Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact. While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expens…

For enterprise SaaS companies sales is one of the most important roles, tied with engineering. Especially if your engineering org/product is weak.

[dead]

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#137

Post by jascha_eng »

biotopia wrote: post #122
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #15

Minimum six months severance pay + healthcare + cash bonus. That is incredibly generous all things considered.

The layoff announcement mentioned that the 11% staff laid off is global. It's possible a lot of people laid off are actually in China, since Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games. There is a trend for Chinese companies to not hire workers that are over 35 years old, so some of these employees might be unemployed for a long time. Also, Chinese economy is in the crapper right now.

Riot is an american company though, I'm pretty sure they have most of their employees in the US and not China.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#138

Post by quartesixte »

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.

Not making payroll because you go cashflow negative makes Boards and C-suites tremble in fear because of the whole “piercing the corporate veil” concept that makes them personally liable for not making payroll.

So you layoff 10% to save the other 90%.

Because otherwise you’d have put 100% of your company out of a job + knock on effects to local economy, being sued, prosecuted for all sorts of things etc etc

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#139

Post by SmallDeadGuy »

BlackjackCF wrote: post #125
mdorazio wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder if it actually had to do more with esports pulling back quite a bit this last year. Riot was leaning into that pretty hard for League. That had to factor in for a large chunk of the headcount for layoffs. I just can’t imagine they’re cash flow negative given how popular League and Valorant are, but maybe they’re seeing enough of a dip in their numbers that they’re trending in that direction.

I thought LoL and Valorant e-sports was breaking records year on year? At least in Europe and Asia, I know the LCS is on the decline.

Re: Changes at Riot Games and the road ahead

#140

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #17
smt88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true with all layoffs. If you can't explain your direct role in creating your product/service, you're going to be higher on the chopping block. Sales, marketing, HR, admins, PMs, etc. are usually the first to go because they don't "keep the lights on" and it's hard to measure their impact. While it's true that it's also hard to measure a single engineer's impact, it's scarier to fire someone who may be expens…

For enterprise SaaS companies sales is one of the most important roles, tied with engineering. Especially if your engineering org/product is weak.

To quote Larry Ellison, you're either building the product or selling the product.
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