Riot Games to go big in 2023, CEO Nicolo Laurent says
Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent has revealed that the company will go all out in 2023, as next year’s budget will be the biggest in the company’s history.
In a recent interview, Laurent reminisced about the early days of Riot, saying that they only had 30 or 40 people when they launched League of Legends. Riot has grown rapidly and now hosts over 4,000 employees, with 500 still working on LoL. Laurent said the company still aims to create fun games in the future.
“What we did in 13/14 years, something like that, now I ask myself if we can still double that for 25 years, so we can be Multi-Generational and parents will bring their children to play the game and if we are able to deliver that it’s GG,” Laurent said.
With an enormous budget, Riot will focus on improving and adding new content to its games, including League of Legends, VALORANT and Legends of Runeterra.
Insiders reveal Project L’s details
Besides working on established titles, Riot is also developing other games, like Project L, which will go public within two years. According to insiders, the upcoming game will probably be named “Rift Rumble.”
The rumor came from Riot’s recent move to trademark several terms that feature the phrase “Rift Rumble.” Another leak about the project’s title comes from banners bearing the name “Rift Rumble.” The banners may indicate that Riot is already planning on creating an esports tournament for its unreleased game.
Riot collaborating with Ubisoft to fight toxic behaviors
Riot has announced a partnership with Ubisoft to perform a research project named “Zero Harm in Comms.” This project aims to address toxic behaviors in online game chat rooms.
The two companies are developing a database to gather in-game data to train an AI. The AI will then moderate and address in-game disruptive conduct preemptively.
“Riot and Ubisoft are aligned in their mission to create gaming structures that foster more rewarding social experiences and avoid harmful interactions,” Riot said.
Riot said the necessity of AI was due to the massive size of gaming communities which grows as video games gain popularity on a global scale. The developer receives around 240 million reports a month on average. In total, the company has to respond to just under 3 billion reports across all of its titles.
“If every Rioter spent 365 days a year with their only job reviewing these reports, we would still need each person to review about six reports per minute to keep up,” Riot said.
Riot said not all reports are honest. Some come from malicious individuals. However, the developer still wants to investigate every report, prompting the development of automated solutions to detect disruptive behaviors.
“While we can’t change the human condition, we can try to shift the way players interact in our games with the aim of creating a better gaming experience,” Riot said.
Ubisoft and Riot plan to publish the results of their initial study with the whole gaming industry next year. Besides collaborating with Ubisoft, Riot has also been working on several moderation tools, including Automated Voice Evaluation, improvements in Text Evaluation, Credibility-Driven Report Evaluation, Real-Time Evaluation and Investment in ProSocial.
