On May 11th, Riot Games made an announcement on their main website, as well as Twitter, announcing that after 6 years, Riot’s CEO Nicolo Laurent is stepping down from the position. Succeeding Laurent will be A. Dylan Jadeja, a veteran of Riot Games having over eleven years experience working at Riot as a chief financial officer and president of global corporate strategy.
This is not going to be the end of Laurent’s work with Riot, as Laurent plans to stay as an advisor with Riot for years to come, but in a letter from Laurent released with the new CEO announcement, he stated:
I joined the company when we were a 40-person startup in 2009, with the goal of bringing League of Legends to players around the world. And that journey has brought me here, serving all of you, as Riot’s CEO. It’s a story I’m very proud of, but if I’m being completely honest, it’s also been tough… It’s really the personal trade-offs that have been hard and the sacrifices my wife and kids have made for my career, including all our expatriations. We’ve always been ok with this as a family, as long as we rebalance at some point.
Being the head of a large video game company is nothing to take lightly and it seems as though it was amicable on both sides. It makes sense that the CEO would want to be able to balance their work with their family and if that balance has not been working over the last six years then it makes sense why Laurent wanted to retire the role.
In the same letter, he also stated that he has full faith in Jadeja to take up the role of CEO. They had worked together for years and after a three year deliberation period to find the new CEO, Jadeja was the best fit for the part.
Riot is as busy as ever with projects, with the upcoming MMO somewhere in the horizon, and three planned games coming in 2023 including The Mageseeker, CONVERGENCE and Song of Nunu according to esports.gg. With the announcement being as recent as it is, only time will tell how well Jadeja works in the role as the new CEO of Riot Games.