Riot Games was developing a potential Twitch competitor before layoffs hit last week.
Along with laying off 530 employees, around 11% of its total staff, Riot stopped development of “REN,” aka “Riot’s Esports Network,” which was one of various “watch platform ideas” it was testing, Riot president of esports John Needham told Bloomberg.
Riot had hoped REN would rival Twitch, which also just cut 500 people in its third round of layoffs in 12 months.
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Riot planned to integrate its games—like marquee titles League of Legends and Valorant, which are consistently two of the top 10 most-watched games on Twitch—into the streamer “so that players could receive bonuses for watching or purchase in-game items,” per Bloomberg.
REN’s development reportedly stemmed from Riot Games’ 2021 acquisition of tech startup Kanga. At the time, Riot said the newly acquired Kanga team would focus on developing digital fandom features and experiences. It’s not clear if that team is still intact or what they’ll be working on now that REN is gone.
2024 has not had an auspicious start in the gaming and tech spaces. Riot’s layoff is one in a string of cuts across nearly 30 game developers and companies, including the aforementioned Twitch, Microsoft (1,900 people affected), Unity (1,800), Discord (170), and YouTube (100), where Global Head of Gaming Leo Olebe was cut.
