Riot layoffs may cause 'absolute disaster' for LEC
The recent layoffs at Riot Games have also impacted their esports departments, and specifically, the LEC broadcast - letting go of several employees in production positions.
According to esports expert Christopher "Montecristo" Mykles, the production for the European League of Legends league could turn out to be "an absolute disaster" when going into the third week of the Winter season.
Riot layoffs impact LEC
The news struck earlier this week that Riot Games was one of the various game development studios undergoing severe layoffs in its workforce. According to an official announcement, the company laid off 530 members of its staff, constituting a whopping 11% of its workforce.
As reported by a list curated by Twitter user @btwbluwu, several members of the LEC production staff were part of the round of layoffs. Former League of Legends broadcast personality and team owner Mykles raised concerns about the impact of said redundancies, calling a potential understaffing in several key roles.
"Losing the executive producer, head of production, multiple engineers responsible for the back end, and 2/3 of the observer team is going to be rough," Mykles tweeted, adding that at least 27 members of the LEC production staff had been let go.
Further impact on the Riot esports ecosystem
Another casualty of the massive wave of layoffs appears to be the now reportedly cancelled internal streaming platform Riot Esports Network (REN). According to a statement given to Bloomberg by the president of esports at Riot Games, John Needham, the company axed the project last week.
REN had been one avenue Riot Games explored to open up additional revenue streams from its viewer base, as traditional approaches had been exhausted. "Riot has spent years failing to sell media rights for esports and now has cancelled their streaming platform that they have been developing for years," Mykles stated.
He added that Riot "kept promising that this project would deliver more revenue. If I was a team owner, I would be livid."
Last week, teams of the South Korean League of Legends franchise league LCK sent an open letter to Riot Games, expressing growing concerns about decreasing revenue despite growing interest in the competition with profit "growing negatively and decreasing every year."
