Report: Behind The Scenes At LEC During The Riot Layoffs

While the first broadcast week since the mass layoffs may have gone ahead with few issues behind the scenes interviews reveal concerns for the gaps in staffing moving forward

On January 22^nd Riot Games announced an unprecedented number of layoffs in their history, a total of 530 individuals that made up 11% of their company. With the notable exception of the c-suite, no part of Riot’s portfolio was spared with every title seeing notable reductions in staff and high profile hires finding themselves no longer part of Riot’s future plans. In a company wide email, that was released publicly in the interests of transparency, the company’s President Dylan Jadeja wrote:

“I want to be super clear about something: this is absolutely the last thing we ever wanted to do. A decision like this has a massive impact on people’s lives and on the culture of Riot. We’re not doing this to appease shareholders or to hit some quarterly earnings number – we’ve made this decision because it’s a necessity. It's what we need to do in order to maintain a long-term focus for players.”

While some of the layoffs make obvious sense when considering the popularity and profitability of some of their lesser known titles, the sheer voluem of firings around their European League, LEC, has left many current and former employees shocked. The esports league has been a beacon of success amid the critically low viewership of their North American equivalent (LCS) which has had to undergo a radical overhaul of its own in order to try and coax back viewers.

The LEC broadcast, which began on the 13^th January 2024, has found itself hit with at least 30 layoffs according to individuals familiar with the staffing situation at Riot Games. This confirms public posts on both Twitter and Reddit about the number of people laid off in relation to the LEC, a list of which can be seen below.

List compiled by @btwbluwu on X.com

In the build up to the layoffs many were left uncertain about what was happening. Internally staff had started to spread word that something might be happening but it wasn’t sure which departments or regions would be severely affected. Several of the people working on LEC we spoke to said they were left in limbo while they awaited their fate, some of whom had been told “not to worry” prior to being fired. Of particular note seems to be the sheer number of employees working on the EMEA side of the broadcast had no information about the upcoming cuts. Several said that their primary source of information as to what was happening at the company were their LEC colleagues who had been communicated with directly.

“It really blindsided us” said one current employee speaking under condition of anonymity. “We had heard that layoffs might be happening and had asked management what that meant for us. We were told not to worry and that we’d have been contacted. Then the emails started to arrive and no-one was sure who was staying or going.”

“It’s a problem with the German law” said another former employee. “We got the emails saying we might be impacted or we aren’t. It might meant you were fired but legally they have to give you a one-on-one phone call.”

The general consensus from speaking to those who worked and are still working on the LEC is that if anything they were understaffed prior to the layoffs. Many explained that they weren’t just performing their job title but worked in several other capacities and not just for LEC either. Many staff worked across LEC, EMEA and other Global projects such as MSI, regional leagues or even Valorant when required. It was also repeated several times by remaining staff members that none of this seems to have been factored in when making the decisions to let people go and now many are having to pick up even more slack to make the broadcast work. At one point there was a belief that a week of LEC could end up being postponed but that has now been averted due to a reassignment of labour. Even then there remain concerns about the quality of the upcoming broadcast due to the reduction in manpower.

“We’re not going to have to postpone the LEC broadcast but we’ve been working overtime at the expense of our mental health to make it happen” an employee that works on LEC informed us. “The observers that we lost have worked on every LEC and International show for close to the past seven years… To have Global leadership decide who gets cut when they’ve probably never watched LEC and wrote off positions not realising these are our crew members for Global events is a joke.”

Based on what was shared with this publication it seems that the culture around LEC had become one of overworking, with one employee likening it to a permanent type of “crunch,” a word used to describe compulsory overtime to complete projects in the video game industry.

“Everyone has two or even three jobs here” they explained. “The working hours are insane but if you don’t do it they will hire someone else who will. Everyone wants to work for Riot because it looks good on your employment record so you have to be irreplaceable. Even then that hasn’t worked because I’ve seen irreplaceable people be fired.”

Two of the sources we interviewed also spoke about how the performance related bonus scheme was effectively used to encourage this approach to work. One explained that employees felt that they couldn’t say no to management requests to do work outside of their job title because this would then later be factored into the bonus payment as “underperforming.” This, coupled along with how the communication about layoffs was rolled out, has led to a lot of the remaining LEC team feeling despondent about the future of the broadcast and their working situation. One described the decisions as being “disastrous” for the show’s quality and went so far as to speculate that the firings were informed by a bias towards the North American region and the LCS.

While public statements from the remaining staff have been thin on the ground the long-standing League of Legends host Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere did tweet to say that “things will be a lot more barebones” in the upcoming broadcast in addition to the emotional challenges that staff would be facing. Veteran French commentator Fabien "Chips" Culié also joked on X.com about having to take a pillow to the studio and added “Riot was supposed to invest in esports not massively cut into LEC skills. It has nothing to do with their press release.”

The weekend’s broadcast went ahead and many in the community have remarked that there were few issues to complain about especially under the circumstances. However multiple sources confirmed that the upper management at Riot were so worried about the broadcast struggling they sent in reinforcements from other offices to make sure it could be completed.

“The reason the show went well was because they flew in a bunch of people from their Stryker broadcast facility in Dublin and from Los Angeles” said one source with knowledge of the broadcast details. “They spent money on flights and hotels while paying people they laid off because it would have been a disaster if they had let it go on. They also basically cut the pre and post shows, had no writers or producers for creative segments and scaled back the scope of in-game replays.”

“We had help with observers and engineers” another worker on the broadcast explained “but we haven’t been told if they are temporary or not. Many on the crew are expecting they won’t have that support next week which will be the real test.”

While layoffs are a part of maintaining the success of any company the issues around the LEC broadcast seem to have been mounting for some time. It seems entirely likely that when making the decision on who to fire and keep there was a lot of information that wasn’t being fed back to the upper management. That combined with the culture of overworking key staff members has left a lot of holes that will need to be plugged at least on a temporary basis. It’s now up to Riot whether or not they make the decisions necessary to help the remaining crew sink or swim.