Riot Games Takes a Week Off, Just Because

With the news cycle being dominated with reports of studios being absolutely horrible to their employees – from Activision-Blizzard severely underpaying some employees to Ubisoft empowering sexual abusers – it seems we’re overdue for some good news on that front. Thankfully, Riot Games has provided, and has announced that they’re taking the whole of the next week off.

Yep. The whole studio, taking a well-earned 5-day vacation.
 

This has been a big year for Riot for a lot of reasons. Putting the ‘s’ in Riot Games was perhaps our proudest moment as a company so far, but tending to so many new games is a delicate balance. Add COVID-19, working from home, and everything else going on in the world, and it can be hard to separate the “work” and “life” pieces of the work-life equation. As game developers, we’re all hyper aware of the effects of crunch and project-based deadlines. We owe it to ourselves and to you to prioritize our health as a team (well, many teams) so we can bring you new experiences long into the future.

This is good for their employees, of course, but it might be a little bittersweet for fans, as Riot Games made it clear that this break will postpone the release of patches and planned content for League of Legends, Team Fight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and of course Valorant. Not for long, of course, it’s just a week, but considering Riot’s been putting out patches every two weeks for League of Legends rather consistently in the past few years, that week-long gap could feel a lot longer for their thirstier fans.

Of course, Riot Games is no stranger to abusing their own workforce. Not that long ago, they were investigated for having their own hostile, misogynistic work environment, and for empowering abusers by promoting them to executive positions. In the years since, however, they seem to have made genuine improvements, and it’s been a long time since anyone’s accused Riot of any wrongdoing.

Hopefully, this proves to be the trend, and not the exception.