| Type | Limited liability company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California |
| Key people | Brandon Beck (CEO) Marc Merrill (President) |
| Products | League of Legends |
| Owner(s) | Tencent Holdings |
| Website | RiotGames.com |
Riot Games is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Santa Monica, California. Established in 2006,[1] Riot Games launched the stand-alone Dota game, League of Legends as its first title in October 2009.[2] Riot Games obtained around 20 million dollars from venture capital firms to create the game. Some of their notable employees include Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, a former developer of the Warcraft 3 custom map Defense of the Ancients and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, creator of the Defense of the Ancients fan site, DotA-Allstars.com.[3] Riot Games also employs several former Blizzard developers, including Tom Cadwell.[4] In early 2011, the Chinese company Tencent Holdings bought a majority stake in Riot Games. Riot Games will maintain independent operations and its existing management team.[5] Due to the success of League of Legends Riot Games has announced plans to hire "aggressively" in 2011.[6] According to a forum post by the Riot Games web content editor "ByronicHero," Riot Games is looking to fill "around 100 job openings" in various departments.
The company raised $8 million in capital from venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital.[7]
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While much of the success of their product League of Legends attributes to its free-to-play model and familiar mechanics, the community relations team, directed by Mescon, has resulted in a growing community. Users and moderators come use the forums located on the League of Legends website to discuss strategy, new or upcoming changes, report bugs or anything else League of Legends. One forum discusses user created content to be potentially added to the game, though this has yet to be done.
Tournaments have been a meeting place for dedicated players and Riot Games staff to meet. At tournaments, panels are held by the staff and memorabilia is handed out to increase brand awareness and increase the sense of community felt by players.[8]
Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of Legends in Asia, Europe, and North America. The game is expected to be released in the rest of the world also. The game has already released and is distributed in Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe. No public announcements regarding other regions have yet been made. In Asia, Tencent Inc., Riot Games’ primary shareholder distributes the game online. The deal is one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a U.S.-developed online game directly to China. In Europe, Riot Games has signed an international licensing partnership with GOA, the video games department of Orange's Content Division and Europe's largest gaming portal. On October 13, 2009, GOA and Riot announced that they would start channeling server access for players located in Europe, to GOA's dedicated servers. This restriction meant that players located in Europe would not be able to play on Riot's servers in the United States. Due to negative community feedback, the channeling decision was rescinded October 16, 2009. In North America, Riot Games will self-publish and operate the game and all of its customer service aspects. On May 10, 2010, Riot Games announced that they would take over distribution and operation of the game in Europe. To do so, Riot Games established a European HQ in Dublin. On July 14, 2009, Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be free with "no catch". There will be a digital copy for download, but there is also a Digital Collector's Copy that will be available to purchase that contains exclusive skins, $10 credit for Riot Points, and 20 champions to access without unlocking them normally via gameplay as well as 4 "special" runes; the Collector's Pack is currently available for $29.99. Even though the game is free, Riot Games "plan[s] to continue to add content (characters etc...) with a full production team at very frequent intervals." Using both free-to-play and freemium models, the game is supported by microtransactions (see store) rather than ads or boxed copy sales. On 25 February 2010 Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be distributed in Southeast Asian countries by an unspecified publisher and blocked SEA IP addresses pursuant to its distribution agreement. The community has raised a number of concerns about the deal and the immediate IP block. On July 16, 2010, Riot Games announced that Garena will publish the game in Southeast Asia.Additionally, Southeast Asian players have the ability "transfer accounts" to import their progress stored in North American or European servers, into the Southeast Asian server.Also, in Canada, they use Java to insure their protection of their games.