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Riot Games’ co-founders, Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, are to step away from their management roles within the company and return to game development.
Writing on the Riot Games blog, the pair (who referred to themselves by their gamertags Tryndamere & Ryze) discussed how they were looking forward to making games again after spending several years as part of the company’s management structure.
"When we founded Riot eleven years ago, we spent virtually every waking hour of the day (and night!) thinking about how to make League of Legends as great of an experience as possible," wrote the pair. "As League started having success, however, Riot Games grew from those humble beginnings where we could feed the whole team with a handful of pizzas to now having over 2,500 Rioters across 20 offices around the world.
"This growth has lots of benefits: our capabilities improved, our reach broadened, and we could deliver League of Legends and esports to more players than ever before. But this growth also meant that the majority of our time is allocated to “managing” the company rather than focusing on creating incredible experiences for players, which is what we really love to do."
Beck and Merrill will be leaving the operations of the company with Dylan Jadeja, Scott Gelb and Nicolo Lauren serving as CFO, CTO and president respectively. This will leave the duo plenty of time to start work on new projects.
"We are thrilled to be able to have a great team of such capable leaders and look forward to working with them to finally put the “s” in Riot Games," the pair concluded. "We’re incredibly excited to jump back into the trenches for this next chapter and look forward to sharing what we’re up to along the way. Thanks to all of you for continuing to make our dream jobs possible
