Riot Games
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Contents
History
Riot Games' was founded to "develop, publish, and support the most player-focused games in the world" according to their website. They have headquarters in Los Angelos, California, and currently have over 3,000 employees worldwide. [2] Founders Brandon Beck and Mark Merrill met at the University of South California where they took classes together. [3] Both Merrill and Beck worked at banks after college, but eventually realized that wasn't what they wanted. The two had connected together over their love for video games, specifically Warcraft 3's Defense of the Ancient: Allstars[4] and Starcraft's Aeons of Strife, both of which were community made mods for their games which resembled the very first Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs). In fact, Riot Games would hire one of the developers of DotA: Allstars as one of their first employees, and League of Legends main competitor today Dota 2 was designed by the founder of Defense of the Ancients: Allstars after he[5] was hired by Valve. Chinese company Tencent would come to own 100% of Riot Games and become its parent company in 2015.
Esports
Riot Games hosts a number of esports leagues, the most well known of which is the League of Legends World Championship. This event is the among most watched sports events in the world[6], and had over 100 million unique viewers in 2019, making it the most popular esport.[7]. In 2021, the prize pool was $2,250,000 USD[8] and had 22 teams compete. In order to qualify, each team needs to place highly in their own regional esports league, which Riot Games also hosts. The total prize pool for all League esports in 2019 was around 9.15 million USD [9]
Riot Games also recently started hosting esports league for Valorant, of which, like the League of Legends World Championship, culminated in the Valorant Champions tournament. It debuted in 2021, and crowned its first ever winners, a team known as Acend. [10] This tournament has a slightly smaller prize pool of around $600,000 USD but this could be due to it being the tournament's nascent year.[11]
Ethical Issues
Tencent
Tencent bad
Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Lawsuit
Harassment bad
References
- ↑ Riot Games' Website https://www.riotgames.com/en
- ↑ https://www.riotgames.com/en/who-we-are
- ↑ https://www.polygon.com/2016/9/13/12891656/the-past-present-and-future-of-league-of-legends-studio-riot-games
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceFrog
- ↑ https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/06/more-people-watched-league-of-legends-than-the-nba-finals/
- ↑ Business Insider on League of Legends World Championships https://www.businessinsider.com/league-of-legends-world-championship-100-million-viewers-2019-12
- ↑ https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/World_Championship/2021#Prize_Pool
- ↑ https://www.statista.com/statistics/807925/lol-tournament-prize-pool/
- ↑ https://liquipedia.net/valorant/VALORANT_Champions_Tour/2021/Champions
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Valorant_Champions#Winnings
