Riot Games is an American video game developer and publisher founded in 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill and headquartered in Los Angeles. The studio launched League of Legends in October 2009 and spent most of the following decade as a one-game company before branching out with Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, Valorant, League of Legends: Wild Rift, and the 2XKO fighting game. Tencent has owned Riot Games outright since 2015, and Riot also produced the Emmy-winning Arcane animated series for Netflix.
Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill met as roommates at the University of Southern California and spent a lot of their free time playing Defense of the Ancients, the Warcraft III mod better known as DotA. Their pitch for Riot was a game supported for years as an ongoing service instead of shipping once and moving on to a sequel. Riot brought in Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, one of the designers behind DotA Allstars, to help build what became League of Legends.
League of Legends launched on PC on October 27, 2009 as a free-to-play game, with money coming from champion unlocks and cosmetic skins rather than a box price. That model shaped pretty much everything Riot did afterward. In the League community, Beck and Merrill were known by their in-game names Ryze and Tryndamere, both of which are League champions.
Tencent, which published League of Legends in China, bought a majority stake in Riot Games in 2011. The remaining equity followed in December 2015, which made Riot a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese tech company. Riot still runs its own development and publishing out of Los Angeles.
Brandon Beck handed the CEO job to Nicolo Laurent in 2017, and Dylan Jadeja, previously Riot's chief financial officer, took over from Laurent in 2023.
League of Legends is set in Runeterra, a world split into regions like Piltover, Zaun, Demacia, Noxus, and Ionia, with a roster of more than 160 champions that includes Jinx, Ahri, Yasuo, and Garen. Bloomberg reported in December 2025 that League still draws more than 100 million players a month. The 2026 season opened in January with Season 1: For Demacia and Patch 26.01.
Riot has spent the past several years turning that setting into a whole catalog of games built around the same champions.
Teamfight Tactics started in June 2019 as an auto battler mode inside the League client, and a standalone mobile version followed in 2020. Riot runs TFT on a set rotation, swapping out the champion pool and mechanics a few times a year, and the 2026 roadmap called for three regular sets.
Legends of Runeterra is Riot's digital card game, released in April 2020 on PC and mobile. After the January 2024 layoffs, Riot shrank the team and shifted the game's focus to Path of Champions, its single-player roguelike mode.
Wild Rift is a rebuilt version of League for phones, with shorter matches and touch controls. Riot started rolling it out regionally in October 2020 and still runs regional Wild Rift programs in markets like the Philippines.
Riftbound is Riot's first physical trading card game, launched in 2025. Riot revealed the Riftbound: Vendetta and Riftbound: Radiance expansions at GAMA Expo 2026.
Valorant launched on PC on June 2, 2020 as Riot's first game outside the League universe. It's a 5v5 tactical shooter that mixes Counter-Strike style gunplay with agents who each bring their own abilities, like Jett's dash or Sage's healing orb. Valorant also introduced Riot Vanguard, a kernel-level anti-cheat that drew criticism over how deep into Windows it runs, and Riot later added Vanguard to League of Legends too.
Valorant came to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2024. Console players get crossplay between PS5 and Xbox, while PC players stay in their own matchmaking pool. Valorant Mobile launched in China in 2025. On the esports side, the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is Riot's competitive circuit, and Riot has already revealed a revamped VCT format for 2027.
Arcane premiered on Netflix in November 2021 and told the story of sisters Vi and Jinx growing up on opposite sides of Piltover and the undercity of Zaun, alongside Caitlyn, Jayce, Viktor, and Silco. Riot produced the series with French animation studio Fortiche and took a significant ownership stake in Fortiche in 2022. Arcane won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program in 2022.
Arcane Season 2 arrived in November 2024 and closed out the story of Vi and Jinx. Riot has said it plans to keep telling Runeterra stories in animation with Fortiche.
Riot Forge was a publishing label Riot launched in 2019 to hand League of Legends champions to outside studios for single-player games. Airship Syndicate made Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, a turn-based RPG set in Bilgewater, and Choice Provisions made the rhythm game Hextech Mayhem, both in 2021. The Mageseeker from Digital Sun, starring Sylas, and Convergence from Double Stallion, starring Ekko, followed in 2023. Tequila Works closed out that year with Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story, built around Nunu and Willump.
Riot shut Riot Forge down in January 2024 as part of layoffs that cut 530 jobs, about 11 percent of the company. The Forge games are still around on PC and consoles, including Xbox, but no new ones are coming.
2XKO started life as Project L, a tag-team fighting game built by the team from Radiant Entertainment, the studio Riot acquired in 2016 from Tom and Tony Cannon, the brothers who co-founded Evo. 2XKO entered early access on PC on October 7, 2025 and fully launched on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on January 20, 2026, with a roster that includes Ahri, Darius, Ekko, Jinx, Caitlyn, Illaoi, and Warwick.
On February 9, 2026, executive producer Tom Cannon announced Riot was reducing the 2XKO team. Riot confirmed to Game Developer that roughly 80 people were let go, close to half of the game's global team, with Cannon saying the momentum after the console launch wasn't enough to support a team that size. Around 12 more roles across Riot's publishing teams were cut later that month. Riot kept the 2026 2XKO Competitive Series going anyway and revealed Lux and Samira for the roster at EVO Vegas.
Riot bought Hypixel Studios and its Minecraft-style sandbox game Hytale in 2020. After years of slow updates, Riot canceled Hytale in June 2025 and wound the studio down. Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme bought Hypixel Studios and the Hytale license back from Riot on November 17, 2025.
Hytale hit early access on January 13, 2026 and passed 1 million players. Riot publicly congratulated Hypixel on the launch, a move some fans called ironic considering who canceled it in the first place.
Kotaku's 2018 investigation into sexism at Riot Games led to a class action gender discrimination lawsuit from current and former employees. Riot agreed to settle the case for $100 million in December 2021.
In December 2025, Bloomberg reported that Riot was working on a major overhaul of League of Legends, internally called League Next and targeted for 2027. Riot confirmed the project soon after, with League executive producer Paul Bellezza making it clear there is no League of Legends 2 in the works. The plan covers a new client built into the game itself, a full visual overhaul of Summoner's Rift, rune changes, and a redesigned experience for new players. Head of League studio Andrei "Meddler" van Roon later cautioned that the League Next showcase planned around Worlds 2026 would not be a full reveal.