Riot Games reviews

Poor leadership experience at the top. League was a huge hit at the time and was more or less an indie startup. The same guys who were the interns, artists, engineers of league early seasons, mediocre by today's standards, are managing teams without actual experience to back it up. They're either painfully aware of this or fooling themselves. Both create horrible paths of toxicity, where vocal employees are quickly exited or silenced, or belittled. Complete dead weight who take credit as much as possible, shut anything down that's not their initiative, leave early, and are the loudest voice in the room. It's extremely easy to take credit for someone else's work due to the culture of 'default to trust'. Pretty easy to push that if you're outright lying about what value you provide. What makes a leader at Riot isn't shipping product or creating, it's if they have a checkmark by their name that says if they took Riot leadership training or not. Or if they're friends with another leader. God help them if Riot ever has layoffs because they'll have a huge wakeup call if they ever go to another studio. If they could trick said company's HR first I guess. Another odd thing is that failure is rewarded more the higher up you go. A leader who tanked two teams wasn't fired but only 'downgraded' to yet another department(probably with the same pay). Mostly due to him being friends with the owner. Meanwhile core employees quickly get exited or fired, sometimes to the detriment to the team they're on, if they step slightly out of Riot culture or suggest anything that could be seen as unsavory. It really creates an odd double culture of fun and games, and keeping your head down and just do exactly what leadership says. Riot can be a great place. The talent they've hired is outstanding. They need to REALLY trim the fat because there's a large amount of useless running amok in leadership roles. Maybe you guys should have yet another meeting to talk about it? I think there's change brewing but it'll be too late to even mean anything unless the actual leadership wake the hell up and actually do something instead of yet another overly complicated power point presentation.

Do you like corporate spin? Welcome aboard, bro! Do you like dealing with people who can never give you a straight answer about why a terrible decision is being made in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is going to be a disaster? Do you like working for people who know less about your craft than you do but are in charge for unexplainable reasons? You'll get to experience managers or dev leads who are super at making convincing, Riot-buzzword-laden PowerPoints but have no practical experience in the departments they run. Do you like having the Riot Manifesto used as a weapon to shut down dissenting opinions? Managers will block real questions about a bad decisions being made with “Well this is what the players want and if you’re so misaligned then maybe you shouldn’t be here.” When their terrible decisions blow up and harm things they'll just shrug and say, “I guess that wasn’t the right call after all.” Zero consequences. Put that on repeat. Do you like getting reasonable, semi-regular raises? Sorry! Getting a raise is tied to the fear your managers have of pushing for and having to justify it to the same department heads that make all the bad decisions. Riot’s “meritocracy” feels like a way to say “If you stay in the same job you will NEVER get a raise.” Sorry, if you just like doing your job. That’s not enough. Oh, you’re doing more? Sorry, your manager didn’t want to fight for it. You aren't likely to get a raise unless you have a title change. This may work for some departments/roles but it makes no sense to use it across the board. Like being kept in the loop? Sorry! Riot's inability to communicate internally and get departments to work together is legendary. Want to duplicate work other teams are already doing? You're in the right place! Want to move from one department at Riot to another (aka Lane Swap)? Good luck! Unless you're a super-ultra-alpha-achiever this is a one-way trip out of the company. I have witnessed people get permission to seek other opportunities in the company from their managers only to have those same managers torpedo their chances in these other departments for political/personal reasons. Even if you do get permission to move, this process will take a minimum of 6 months to a year to actually happen.