Riot Games reviews

4.0

75% would recommend to a friend

(1,042 total reviews)
avatar

Dylan Jadeja

68% approve of CEO

54% positive business outlook

Riot Games has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,042 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Riot Games employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Médias et communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
2.0
Jun 20, 2016

Decent Benefits but Major Downsides

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Basically the same benefits that have been lauded by pretty much everyone else here: Free snacks and lunches/dinner, unlimited PTO, nice offices, etc.

Cons

Disorganization is rampant so lots of time and resources are wasted. Often completely separate teams end up working on the same project because neither knew about the other. Likewise, projects and research that have already been done tend to get done over and over because the information is not disseminated appropriately. Major projects tend to get spun up rapidly and dropped just as fast because of this disorganization, so a majority of the really big and cool things people work on here never get completed and see the light of day. Leadership is often inexperienced and ineffective. Most senior leaders surround themselves with yes-men only and challenging the wrong leader can effectively end your career at Riot. Subordinates often end up getting scapegoated for poor leadership decisions while the leaders themselves get off scot-free. Leadership also tends to claim that we have the "secret sauce" but no real idea what it actually is, which leads to sitting around twiddling our thumbs. Can be a hostile workplace. People who come forward with complaints or stories about discrimination tend to get brushed off as "poor culture fits" or "not core gamers" (including by senior leadership). Casual sexism, racism and transphobia is pretty rampant here.

avatar
Riot Games Response
9y
Hi, and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. What concerns me most about your review is experiencing a hostile workplace and facing discrimination. As manager of Diversity and Inclusion in Talent (which is a new role to Riot that is early in its development), I can say for certain that we care deeply about creating a safe space for Rioters and we don’t tolerate toxicity in both our game and our organization. We develop harassment and discrimination prevention training that is required for all Rioters and are currently designing content to address unconscious biases that might lead to a toxic environment. Our passion is educating Rioters to be more aware of how they impact each other so that teams are healthy and strong to continue delivering awesome experiences for players. I take your review very seriously, and urge you to reach out to Talent so we can understand what you’ve experienced. We have incredible Talent Partners who are available to listen, support, and take appropriate actions to solve these concerns. Thanks again for your thoughts, Soha El-Sabaawi
1.0
Oct 10, 2016

Jekyll and Hyde

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Passionate people - Company for gamers - Benefits/Food are unparalleled - Lots of opportunities to develop if you are right out of college

Cons

- The illusion of a “flat structure” needs to stop. The company does not operate in a flat structure. It just doesn't so please stop saying it does. Accountability is a big issue at the company, recognition for hard work goes unnoticed and the wrong people end up getting scapegoated because of this illusion. - Leadership is not unified on the goals of the company and everyone is acting in their own interests. Efforts are scattered and an alarming amount of waste in resources and energy happens across the company on a daily bases. This is why so many people are complaining about long hours and difficulty in work/life balance even though the company is bloated with too many employees. You don't need more employees, you need better leaders that lead by example. - Communication is poor and duplicate efforts with leaders that are at odds with each other can be found across the organization. There is little transparency and many decisions without explanation or well thought out plans for how to fully implement them are made. - Subversive bullying is reinforced. Women, transgender and introverted Rioters get the brunt of this behavior and are frequently bullied by loud stereotypical alpha personalities. When the outliers complain or seek assistance in a difficult situation they are dismissed by leadership as not having what it takes to be a Rioter because they are not fixing the problem themselves.

2.0
Mar 26, 2019

Incompetence disguised as startup culture

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Food, comfy salary, good time off policy, projects look exciting at first.

Cons

Riot has some deeply incompetent senior leaders that the C level executives refuses to fire despite feedback feom entire department, and even multiple reports for misconduct. I don't know what kind of dirt they have on the CEO, but it must be something! This incompetence manifests itself in a total chaos where literally no one knows what the hell is going on. A project pops up last minute and all the sudden its the number one priority at the company. Or is it? No one knows what's going on. You could be excited working on a project, and all the sudden it turns out the guy in charge of the project forgot to ask the CEO to approve the money to finance the project before making people work on it. What?! I'm all understanding of canceling projects for business reasons, happens all the time. But this is not a business reason, this is just incompetence. Many many projects are canceled at Riot simply because the approval process is nonexistent. A telling anecdote is that Riot invented a word : "soft greenlight" Does this mean the project is approved and good to go? Go figure! You will have 1-1 with executives paid half a million dollars a year and tell them the problems of the department and how to solve them by using industry standard team composition and reporting structure, they tell you it's not how riot does things. 30 million dollar and 5 department restructuration later, they end up on industry standard and have the gut to make it sound like a genius idea. It's not a genius idea, companies have been organized this way for centuries for a reason. The founders wanted their "started in garage" narrative so much they made a game company into a mediocre tech company. Anything that takes a month at another company it takes us 6. Because we have to pay a bunch of admin people making competitive market analysis , dealing with the red tape, only to end on obvious industry standards again. All this means competitors game companies simply beat Riot to market every time. Riot is flattered by copycats, thinking that means Riot is setting the bar. Has it ever occurred to Riot that competitors only want familiarity to steal from the 100 million disgruntled players we let down?

Viewing 16 - 18 of 1,042 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,460 Riot Games reviews submitted anonymously by Riot Games employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Riot Games is right for you.