Riot Games’ cofounders step back into active development as the studio looks towards game two

Riot’s founders, Brandon Beck and Marc Merill, are changing their roles so that they’re more in touch with active development at the company. 

This was revealed in a blog post entitled ‘Founders’ Lane Swap’, where the pair talk about the early days of Riot Games, 11 years ago, mentioning that they used to spend “virtually every waking hour of the day (and night!) thinking about how to make League of Legends as great of an experience as possible.” 

However, now the pair admit that they spend the majority of their time managing the company rather than “creating incredible experiences for players.” As that’s what they’d prefer to do, and they run the company, they’ve decided to do just that, and will be joining active development on Riot Games second game, mentioning that they’re “looking forward to working with them to finally put the s in Riot Games.” 

They’ll be trading lanes with CFO Dylan Jadeja, CTO Scott Gelb and president Nicolo Laurent, while the trilane might be unusual in the current corporate meta, Beck and Merrill are keen to point out the trio are “longtime Rioters” who have been “integral” in making the company what it is over the last 10 years. 

Riot’s second game has been the cause of much speculation of late. Riot acquired Radiant Entertainment, developers of an in-development free-to-play fighting game Rising Thunder last year, before cancelling the game. This has led many people to believe their next game is a fighting game, after all, they’ve hired the talent for it in the shape of the Cannon brothers, Tom and Tony Cannon, who were the driving force behind Rising Thunder’s creation. 

Fans hope to hear something after this year’s Worlds final, taking place at the end of this month in China.