Riot Games reviews

Over time, Riot has started dramatically sliding into a downward trajectory due to our explosive growth. Long gone are the days where everyone worked hard together and strive to provide tangible results towards player value. There are still pockets where this exists, but are more of the exception than the rule. Friendships, nepotism, and saying the right thing in meetings are now far more important to career growth than anything else. There is a major focus on bringing in new people who are considered awesome with only scattered emphasis on giving people opportunities to grow themselves. Some of those same awesome people then leave within 6 months. Taking on new projects and demonstrating results there are often looked upon negatively if you don't execute them flawlessly. We have become super risk adverse and are so afraid of making a mistake many people sit in paralysis. We constantly pat ourselves on the back and say how awesome we are and then remind ourselves to be humble in our awesomeness. There certainly is lots of awesome stuff we do, but there is a ton of dead weight and very little real humility. We are proud of our feedback culture, and how open and trasparent we are. For some parts of Riot that is really true and those people are very lucky. For other parts, people live in fear of leaving real feedback for fear of retaliation. We are in the middle of our review process and it is almost all anonymous due to that fear. These problems are more significant for women at Riot, because they routinely seem to get the short end of the stick. Double standards, worse pay, higher expectations and faster to be exited. If you are a smooth talker and want what is probably a safe and interesting job for years to come, I would highly recommend Riot. If you want to be valued by your results, and paid a comparable amount to other companies in Santa Monica, pick somewhere else.

Riot has tons of potential but as of now there's a huge layer of people and management systems in place that prevent any attempt at improving the day to day for the teams and making the culture more in line with how it portrays itself. It's all about playing politics/pleasing the right people and not getting results. Mark & Brandon's vision on management and culture is what got me to join the studio and it was sad that the walk was so far from the talk. Better you know what to expect and make your decision accordingly. Because Riot is a huge list of teams though, you might get lucky and end up on a team that is very much like the talk. But if you're going to management you better be ready to deal with a load of ambiguous politics and be willing to follow orders without making waves. A mere disagreement with the wrong person can lead you out. Be also prepared to be pressured to bring results and be blocked by the very same people. They somehow expect you to bring results while keeping things the same or not rubbing anyone off in the change process. You were told you were hired to bring results and bring your expertise on how other companies are organized, but in truth you were brought in to fulfill an illusion and integrate in the status quo like in any other company. Your success will depend on who you make friends with and who you rub the wrong way. So if you consider the studio with a desire to improve things, have autonomy/liberty of action and no politics you might want to pass. Riot has become a place where you "align" or else. Different view points are not welcome. If you're an introvert you might want to pass too as Riot culture promotes assertiveness and scores low on respect of different view points, thoughtfulness and collaboration. The assertive ones win the arguments, not the best idea providers nor the data gatherers. This leads to teams spinning their wheels a lot, with the worst cases being not shipping anything in years...Teams also don't like to depend on each other and rather than fix their communication, they think the solution is to be totally independent from one another which emphasizes frictions. This is quite telling on the organizational issues at hand. Prepare for some pains in getting teams to communicate or work effectively with others to get things done. I would also not recommend if you're a female unless you're happy to take a passive role, take notes and say yes all the time. You're there to be of service, not to have opinions. While the guys can disagree to the point of screaming at each other , you'll be seen as negative and difficult if you fight for your ideas. Beware what people say. Though Riot promotes direct feedback, it's very hard to get honest feedback from people. If you see your manager acting weird there's probably some feedback they're not sharing. Make sure you can trust the people you interact with if you have constructive feedback on the company, as saying anything constructive can easily be perceived as negativity. For those of you confused by the fact that I said Riot promotes fitting in but at the same time the assertive ones win, welcome to what reviewers call "ambiguity". You'll have plenty of situations like this at Riot, making it very difficult to assess the right course of action. You'll be told to give your opinions but then your managers will be annoyed because you disagreed with them. You'll be told to take initiative but then your managers and others will be annoyed you didn't ask permission first etc...As a manager I consider clarity to be a key part of my role in getting great performance from my teams so that didn't work for me. Figuring out what the true Riot culture is usually takes people a full year. That's no joke. I asked around because I couldn't believe what i was seeing and most of the people I talked to said they struggled here their full first year and some are still struggling to this day because they cannot do anything about the politics which make getting results difficult, and are still pressured to bring results by those same people blocking them. That's only something that can be fixed from the top...