Riot
Company
Documents about Riot
Session: AI vs. Your Game: The New Era Of Social Media Attacks - Naveh Ben Dror, Spikerz
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered the threat landscape for gaming studios, shifting the nature of social media attacks from manual, labor-intensive efforts to automated, scalable, and highly sophisticated operations.
- One in five gaming studios will experience a security breach, as AI-driven threats have shifted from manual efforts to automated, scalable operations.
- Major industry players including Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, and Xbox have already been targeted by sophisticated AI-enabled attacks.
- Attackers are using AI to scrape professional networks for employee data and generate hyper-personalized phishing content in any language to bypass traditional security.
Layoffs Hit 2XKO Team at Riot Games
Riot Games has initiated a workforce reduction affecting approximately 80 employees associated with the development of its free-to-play fighting game, 2XKO.
- Riot Games has laid off approximately 80 employees from the development team for its free-to-play fighting game, 2XKO.
- Executive producer Tom Cannon stated that while the game has a passionate core audience, overall player engagement levels did not justify the existing team size following the game's January 20, 2026, launch.
- Affected employees are being offered a severance package that includes six months of notice pay and the opportunity to apply for other roles within Riot Games.
First Details on Valorant EMEA Clash 2026
Riot Games has unveiled the initial structure for the Valorant EMEA Clash 2026, a regional tournament designed to bridge the gap between tier-one and tier-two professional play.
- The Valorant EMEA Clash 2026 is a 12-team tournament featuring six VCT EMEA teams and six EMEA Challengers teams competing for a qualification spot at Masters Santiago.
- The tournament utilizes a unique double-elimination format with two simultaneous brackets, Alpha and Omega, where losing teams in the upper bracket are moved to the lower bracket of the opposing dimension.
- The top four teams from the VCT EMEA Kickoff tournament receive a bye directly into round two of the competition.
League of Legends Champions Korea Cup Final Heads to Hong Kong
Riot Games has announced that the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) Cup final will take place at the Kai Tak Arena in Hong Kong from February 28 to March 1, 2026.
- Riot Games will host the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) Cup final at the Kai Tak Arena in Hong Kong from February 28 to March 1, 2026.
- This event marks the first time in LCK history that a final has been held outside of South Korea.
- The top two teams competing in the final will qualify for the 2026 First Stand Tournament (FST) in Brazil, scheduled for March 13–22.
Minecraft’s Spin-off Hytale Makes Waves, Meta Layoffs, and Metacritic’s Best Game Ever
The sandbox title Hytale has emerged as a significant industry development, successfully transitioning into early access after the developers reclaimed the project from Riot Games.
- Hytale has transitioned to early access as an independent project after reclaiming development from Riot Games, securing two years of operational funding through independent sales.
- Meta is shifting its strategic focus away from metaverse and gaming initiatives to prioritize investments in artificial intelligence and wearable hardware.
- Amazon Games is sunsetting the MMO New World, underscoring the difficulty of community-led preservation due to proprietary server code and legal restrictions.
EA Wins, Xbox Bleeds, and VCs Get Roasted | Golden Twig Awards 2025
The Golden Twig Awards 2025 serves as an industry retrospective, evaluating the most significant news, strategic failures, and notable performances across the global gaming sector over the past year.
- The acquisition of Electronic Arts (EA) by Saudi interests stands as the most significant industry event of 2025, signaling a major shift in global capital structures and market consolidation.
- Xbox is facing systemic criticism for studio closures, a struggling subscription model, and a declining competitive position in the console market.
- Venture capital firms are experiencing a collapse of the 'Riot 2.0' investment thesis, with high-profile, unproven studios like Forte failing to meet their valuations.
TWIG #365 Golden Twig Awards: The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Moves in Games This Year
The gaming industry in 2025 is defined by a volatile landscape of high-stakes acquisitions, structural instability, and a fundamental misalignment between venture capital expectations and studio performance.
- The 2025 gaming industry is shifting away from venture capital-backed models toward funding led by established publishers, following the failure of numerous studios that attempted to replicate the success of giants like Riot or Blizzard.
- Companies are increasingly bypassing traditional distribution channels by launching direct-to-consumer web stores to mitigate structural instability and high-stakes acquisition volatility.
- Audience growth has stagnated, forcing publishers to pivot from acquisition to optimizing existing user bases through new advertising models, such as Roblox’s programmatic integration with Amazon DSP.
Important Dates for the 2026 League of Legends Esports Season
Riot Games has announced the official schedule and structural updates for the 2026 League of Legends esports season, which spans major competitive regions including the United States, Brazil, South Korea, China, the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe.
- The 2026 League of Legends World Championship will be held in North America, with early stages at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas, and the final hosted in New York City.
- The 'First Stand' tournament, featuring eight teams from global leagues, is scheduled for March 16–22, 2026, at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, Brazil.
- Regional league play begins in January 2026: LCK and LPL start January 14, LCP on January 16, LEC and CBLOL on January 17, and the LCS on January 24.
LEC Versus: EMEA Invitational Details
Riot Games has announced the structure and schedule for the LEC Versus 2026, the inaugural event of the League of Legends EMEA Championship season.
- Riot Games will launch the 2026 League of Legends EMEA season with a new 12-team tournament called LEC Versus, beginning January 17, 2026.
- The tournament features all 10 standard LEC teams alongside two ERL guest teams, Los Ratones and Karmine Corp Blue.
- The competition format consists of a single round-robin of best-of-one matches, followed by a double-elimination playoff bracket for the top eight teams.
Riot Replaces Talon With Full Sense for VCT Pacific
Riot Games has officially replaced Talon Esports with the Thailand-based organization Full Sense for the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific season.
- Riot Games has replaced Talon Esports with the Thailand-based organization Full Sense for the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific season.
- Riot terminated its partnership with Talon in November 2025 due to a failure to meet league operational standards, specifically citing a pattern of significantly overdue payments and insufficient financial capacity.
- Talon faced public financial scrutiny in August 2025 following reports of a $1 million bridge loan and $75,000 in unpaid interest owed to investor Bainy Zhang.
Riot Removes TALON From VCT Pacific, LCP Leagues
Riot Games has terminated the partnerships of TALON Esports within the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific and the League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP) leagues, effective November 2025.
- Riot Games terminated TALON Esports’ partnerships in the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific and the League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP) effective November 18, 2025.
- The termination was driven by TALON's failure to meet league standards, specifically citing a pattern of significantly overdue payments to players and insufficient financial capacity.
- Riot Games will conduct a selective application process to identify a replacement team for the 2026 season, with a priority on maintaining representation for the Thai community.
Four Things We Learned at the AI and Games Conference 2025
The second annual AI and Games Conference, held in London in November 2025, served as a forum for industry practitioners to discuss the practical, ethical, and commercial applications of artificial intelligence within the video game sector.
- Industry leaders like Riot Games are prioritizing safety-first development, abandoning reinforcement learning features if they risk degrading the player experience.
- CD Projekt Red demonstrated that performance-focused, lightweight game mechanics are superior to resource-heavy, opaque AI solutions for complex systems like the Cyberpunk 2077 police AI.
- Investors are shifting away from trend-chasing and now prioritize studios with clear, transformative visions and strong team dynamics over pitches relying on vague AI promises.