Layoffs at Riot Games: Is Legends of Runeterra shutting down in 2024?

Earlier today, Riot Games announced plans to layoff around 11% of its global staff in an effort to move the company "toward a more sustainable future." Around 530 roles globally are being eliminated, "with the biggest impact to teams outside of core development."

This means, in general, Riot's core live games — League of Legends, teamfight Tactics, Wild Rift, and VALORANT — will remain largely unaffected. In fact, Riot stated they are prioritizing these teams so they can "focus on the content, features and updates."

You'll notice that Legends of Runeterra was not part of that core live game group. Despite being an incredibly fun and polished collectible card strategy game, Legends of Runeterra hasn't quite found its footing as a business. Riot confirmed that the game "has faced financial challenges since launch, costing significantly more to develop and support than it generates."

Is Legends of Runeterra shutting down in 2024?

The good news is that Riot will not be shutting down Legends of Runeterra in 2024. At least there don't appear to be any plans to do so just yet.

But they do need to find a way to make the game sustainable. This, unfortunately, means layoffs. They are reducing the size of the LoR team and will renew focus on The Path of Champions.

Leading this refocused team is Eric Shen (Riot Shen1138). With a diverse champions and deck archetypes, the foundation for a great game already exists in Legends of Runeterra. Now the hope is that focusing fully on the Path of Champions will deliver a business model that is more sustainable.

An updated roadmap for Legends of Runeterra was not shared, but Riot does have plans to host a chat on February 2nd with Dave Guskin (who is stepping down as Executive Producer and Game Director but will remain at Riot), Eric, Marc Merrill and Andrei van Roon.