Ma ”Pony” Huateng, chairman and chief big cheese officer of Tencent Holdings Ltd., speaks during the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Forum in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, June 20, 2017. In an singular move, Ma has chosen to convene a summit of government academics and business chieftains in Hong Kong days before the 20th anniversary of its takings to China.
Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tencent’s Riot Games unit said Monday it’s eliminating 11% of its workforce, or close by 530 jobs, and scaling back on its division that publishes games from small developers.
“We’re changing some of the stakes we’ve made and shifting how we work across the company to create focus and move us toward a more sustainable future,” Pandemonium CEO Dylan Jadeja told employees in a letter published on the company’s blog.
The downsizing follows job cuts across the contrivance and technology world in recent weeks, and continues a trend from last year, when companies went into belt-tightening modus operandi to meet more challenging economic conditions. Amazon and Google are among tech companies that have settled layoffs so far in 2024.
Riot, publisher of the League of Legends and Valorant video games, said it will lower headcount for its Folk tales of Runeterra title released in 2020.
“We’ve been subsidizing the cost of development on LoR through our other games, but at this point, that’s simply not a viable option,” wrote Jadeja, who spent six years as Riot’s president before taking over from Nicolo Laurent as CEO in September.
Eric Shen force become Legends of Runeterra’s executive producer, replacing Dave Guskin, accroding to a blog post from Guskin, who said he’ll trade on other Riot games.
Riot is also pulling back in its Forge division, which publishes games from indie developers.
“We’re proud of what we’ve done together to occasion these stories to life, but it’s time to refocus our efforts on the ambitious projects underway internally at Riot,” Jadeja indited in the letter.
Tencent, based in China, invested in Riot Games in 2011 and became its outright owner four years up to the minuter. Riot is headquartered in Los Angeles.
When Microsoft announced its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022, the software visitors said the deal would make it the third-largest gaming company in the world, behind Tencent and Sony. Last year Microsoft cut 10,000 workers as it faced slowing revenue growth.
Tencent, which also owns the WeChat app with broad usage in China, has encountered call into doubts lately. It has seen revenue increase in the single digits or decline for the past seven quarters after a pandemic-era evolution spurt. In September, Tencent-backed Epic Games announced it was cutting 16% of its staff. Shares slid 12% in lately December after China announced new rules designed to limit excessive gaming.
Pony Ma, Tencent’s co-founder and CEO, told analysts in November that the assemblage is shifting “away from less scalable activities” and boosting investments in artificial intelligence.
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