8 ms·

What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

81 points by cammm 7y ago

dickeytk 7y ago
TIL Riot is owned by Tencent
- Kiro 7y ago
  What company isn't?
  - theshrike79 7y ago
    Disney
  - Agentlien 7y ago
    EA and Take-Two Interactive (which own Rockstar) are the only big players I can think of. It's crazy. I went through the list of big publishers and most are at least partially owned by Tencent.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Tencent only owns 5% of Activison Blizzard, Paradox, and Ubisoft. They own 40% of Epic Games, and 100% of Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile).
    - Kiro 7y ago
      Also 100% of Supercell and they dominate the Chinese mobile gaming market with Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile.
DavidVoid 7y ago
I wonder if the work culture has gotten any better there since 2018. https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...
trenning 7y ago
Another take on what it's like to work there when the copy isn't curated by HR and PR. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games-Reviews-E247538.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games-Reviews-E247538... Written 1/24/2020 - 11 days ago, Pros - Colleagues who really really care about what they're doing - The best campus and amenities you're going to see in LA - Being surrounded by other gamers/people of similar ages and hobbies - Cool products - a ton of R&D Cons - toxic, extremely harmful culture for women/nbs, poc and those who don't play the game with the ol' boys club - lawsuits galore - sexual harassment left and right, especially from executives and skip levels - work/life balance is non-existent, and the great amenities help keep you there. (Lots of divorces happen because of this place.) - don't expect a title that reflects your actual skillset unless you're sleeping with someone, or are a man who knows how to trade on social currency. Riot likes to hire people who are overqualified and make them battle to the death for promotions
- shoulderfake 7y ago
  Why the hell would anyone work at a place like that
  - scrumbledober 7y ago
    It seems to be a common theme in the video game industry. There are so many people that are very passionate about video games to a degree that they will take a lower salary and worse working conditions than they could get coding for any other industry. It's passion exploitation.
  - myoon 7y ago
    Probably a combination of wanting to work on games, and if you make it through the gauntlet you get exercise a lot of power and reap whatever "rewards" may come with that. Maybe it's a similar mindset to enduring working at a consulting/law/finance firm hoping to make partner, etc.
  - papreclip 7y ago
    the sexual harassment stuff can be pretty invisible if you aren't a target yourself regarding the identity politics stuff, some people live and breath IP and their perception of untenable conditions would be unremarkable to me (e.g. a 22 yr old saying "that's so ghetto") work-life balance is a deal-breaker for me, but in my early 20s maybe it wouldn't have been if i spent half the work day playing my favorite video game
frostyj 7y ago
might be off topic, but the monitor wall they have is awesome
- jtms 7y ago
  off topic or not, it is indeed pretty awesome
Madmallard 7y ago
It's baffling seeing all these credentialed people talk and the game still having an utterly horrid bug riddled client for so long now.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  I think that's less on the talent of the people and more what they're being directed to work on. Riot management would rather prioritize new shiny stuff like new gamemodes, champions, reworks, etc, and otherwise stuff they can charge players for, instead of cleaning up their messes even if it would be a massive QoL improvement.
- frozenlettuce 7y ago
  Did they implement replays in the client? The last time I played it was '11. Even a 20+ year game like Starcraft could do this.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Sorta, but it's limited in silly ways. Saved replays are basically dead after every patch since they are a hack around the spectator system.
    - taneq 7y ago
      Are you talking about LoL or Starcraft (whose replays also randomly stopped working after patches)?
      - Karunamon 7y ago
        In LoL's case it's explicitly enforced. Every time there's a patch, old replays go away.
- jrockway 7y ago
  My impression from playing games is that bugs don't kill the games, stopping feature releases to fix bugs kills games. Everyone just laughs at the bugs, even when they change the outcome of an esports matchup with millions of dollars on the line. In the end, the players keep playing and the sponsors keep buying ads, so it's no biggie. Looking through Blizzard's tech talks about Overwatch (they do exist!) is that they focus their testing on making the game fun. They do not say that this comes at the expense of thorough unit and integration tests, but from playing the game, my impression is that it does. Sometimes a patch will come out and the patch notes will be along the lines of "that ability didn't actually work in the last release, but hey we fixed it". Unit tests always notice abilities not working; playtests don't always pick them up. But unit tests will never make your game fun, and nobody will play a game that's not fun. So I'm guessing they don't work on that. (This video shows what happens when you uncover a lot of untested corner cases all at once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc) There are many software engineers that do enjoy bug-free software. Nobody cares because people are given passes time and again for bad software. Some bugs in a game? "OMEGALUL". Some credit card numbers stolen? "Oh, we're deeply sorry." The software crashes the plane from time to time? "Hey, we'll fix that in the 737 MAX v2." If engineers working on safety systems don't really care about bugs, why should a game whose competitors don't care either? It's just throwing money away. When Dota2 starts stealing LoL users because of their amazing bug-free client, then suddenly everyone will be working on testing frameworks. Until then, I expect some bugs in my games.
Firebrand 7y ago
Does Riot outsource their animation and music production? The cinematic and music videos they’ve been releasing every year are always amazing.
- jaaron 7y ago
  Cinematics are outsourced. There was an effort to build an in-house cinematics team, but that was abandoned years ago. They often partner with Blur, but use others as well. Music production is largely in-house.
henryw 7y ago
Interesting that 3 of the 5 employees play support and the other 2 play top.
- JimTheMan 7y ago
  To completely stereotype: Teamplayers do interviews that make the company look good?
egypturnash 7y ago
I was waiting for the answer to "what position do you play in League of Legends" to be "basically I don't" and there it was at the end of the last interview.
jayd16 7y ago
I'm more curious to hear about what its like to work at Riot but on any of the other games.
cranium 7y ago
I used to enjoy reading the bugfixes section in the patch notes. They make me wonder "how the heck is this game implemented ?!" due to the weirdly specific interactions. Eg: Winter Wonder Neeko will no longer lose a significant amount of base stats and the ability to basic attack when Lulu uses W - Whimsy on her as Neeko is using R - Pop Blossom while disguised. -> A character using a specific skin is affected by a specific spell when this character is in a specific form casting a specific spell. (Btw, I don't know how the bug was even found.) (Coming from a 4 months old patch: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-9-20-notes/ https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch...)
BigolJones 7y ago
Ironically I was listening to an interview about working at riot (the one with darmar). It did sound like there were no major flaws, which is pretty impossible ain't it. Reading the discussion proved the point I guess.
Areibman 7y ago
I spent a few days at Riot for one of their hackathons. First of all, the entire space feels like a video game inspired theme park. It's really unlike anything I've seen before. While I can't speak to what the daily routine looks like, I was blown away by how passionate Rioters were about shipping great software and UX. I spoke with one of the lead designers for the Ezreal re-work, and it's shocking to learn just how much effort goes into every minor detail. They do everything in their power to ensure users love the product. That's not the kind of culture you find at your typical software shop. Also, Riot has an excellent developer community and API[0]. Riot believes that the community, not just the engineering staff, makes the product great. So, a lot of effort goes into making sure 3rd party developers can work with the LoL brand. [0] https://developer.riotgames.com https://developer.riotgames.com

81 points by cammm 7y ago

dickeytk 7y ago

TIL Riot is owned by Tencent

Kiro 7y ago
What company isn't?
- theshrike79 7y ago
  Disney
- Agentlien 7y ago
  EA and Take-Two Interactive (which own Rockstar) are the only big players I can think of. It's crazy. I went through the list of big publishers and most are at least partially owned by Tencent.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Tencent only owns 5% of Activison Blizzard, Paradox, and Ubisoft. They own 40% of Epic Games, and 100% of Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile).
  - Kiro 7y ago
    Also 100% of Supercell and they dominate the Chinese mobile gaming market with Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile.

DavidVoid 7y ago

I wonder if the work culture has gotten any better there since 2018. https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...

trenning 7y ago

Another take on what it's like to work there when the copy isn't curated by HR and PR. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games-Reviews-E247538.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Riot-Games-Reviews-E247538... Written 1/24/2020 - 11 days ago, Pros - Colleagues who really really care about what they're doing - The best campus and amenities you're going to see in LA - Being surrounded by other gamers/people of similar ages and hobbies - Cool products - a ton of R&D Cons - toxic, extremely harmful culture for women/nbs, poc and those who don't play the game with the ol' boys club - lawsuits galore - sexual harassment left and right, especially from executives and skip levels - work/life balance is non-existent, and the great amenities help keep you there. (Lots of divorces happen because of this place.) - don't expect a title that reflects your actual skillset unless you're sleeping with someone, or are a man who knows how to trade on social currency. Riot likes to hire people who are overqualified and make them battle to the death for promotions

shoulderfake 7y ago
Why the hell would anyone work at a place like that
- scrumbledober 7y ago
  It seems to be a common theme in the video game industry. There are so many people that are very passionate about video games to a degree that they will take a lower salary and worse working conditions than they could get coding for any other industry. It's passion exploitation.
- myoon 7y ago
  Probably a combination of wanting to work on games, and if you make it through the gauntlet you get exercise a lot of power and reap whatever "rewards" may come with that. Maybe it's a similar mindset to enduring working at a consulting/law/finance firm hoping to make partner, etc.
- papreclip 7y ago
  the sexual harassment stuff can be pretty invisible if you aren't a target yourself regarding the identity politics stuff, some people live and breath IP and their perception of untenable conditions would be unremarkable to me (e.g. a 22 yr old saying "that's so ghetto") work-life balance is a deal-breaker for me, but in my early 20s maybe it wouldn't have been if i spent half the work day playing my favorite video game

frostyj 7y ago

might be off topic, but the monitor wall they have is awesome

jtms 7y ago
off topic or not, it is indeed pretty awesome

Madmallard 7y ago

It's baffling seeing all these credentialed people talk and the game still having an utterly horrid bug riddled client for so long now.

Karunamon 7y ago
I think that's less on the talent of the people and more what they're being directed to work on. Riot management would rather prioritize new shiny stuff like new gamemodes, champions, reworks, etc, and otherwise stuff they can charge players for, instead of cleaning up their messes even if it would be a massive QoL improvement.
frozenlettuce 7y ago
Did they implement replays in the client? The last time I played it was '11. Even a 20+ year game like Starcraft could do this.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  Sorta, but it's limited in silly ways. Saved replays are basically dead after every patch since they are a hack around the spectator system.
  - taneq 7y ago
    Are you talking about LoL or Starcraft (whose replays also randomly stopped working after patches)?
    - Karunamon 7y ago
      In LoL's case it's explicitly enforced. Every time there's a patch, old replays go away.
jrockway 7y ago
My impression from playing games is that bugs don't kill the games, stopping feature releases to fix bugs kills games. Everyone just laughs at the bugs, even when they change the outcome of an esports matchup with millions of dollars on the line. In the end, the players keep playing and the sponsors keep buying ads, so it's no biggie. Looking through Blizzard's tech talks about Overwatch (they do exist!) is that they focus their testing on making the game fun. They do not say that this comes at the expense of thorough unit and integration tests, but from playing the game, my impression is that it does. Sometimes a patch will come out and the patch notes will be along the lines of "that ability didn't actually work in the last release, but hey we fixed it". Unit tests always notice abilities not working; playtests don't always pick them up. But unit tests will never make your game fun, and nobody will play a game that's not fun. So I'm guessing they don't work on that. (This video shows what happens when you uncover a lot of untested corner cases all at once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl11iqagWIc) There are many software engineers that do enjoy bug-free software. Nobody cares because people are given passes time and again for bad software. Some bugs in a game? "OMEGALUL". Some credit card numbers stolen? "Oh, we're deeply sorry." The software crashes the plane from time to time? "Hey, we'll fix that in the 737 MAX v2." If engineers working on safety systems don't really care about bugs, why should a game whose competitors don't care either? It's just throwing money away. When Dota2 starts stealing LoL users because of their amazing bug-free client, then suddenly everyone will be working on testing frameworks. Until then, I expect some bugs in my games.

Firebrand 7y ago

Does Riot outsource their animation and music production? The cinematic and music videos they’ve been releasing every year are always amazing.

jaaron 7y ago
Cinematics are outsourced. There was an effort to build an in-house cinematics team, but that was abandoned years ago. They often partner with Blur, but use others as well. Music production is largely in-house.

henryw 7y ago

Interesting that 3 of the 5 employees play support and the other 2 play top.

JimTheMan 7y ago
To completely stereotype: Teamplayers do interviews that make the company look good?

egypturnash 7y ago

I was waiting for the answer to "what position do you play in League of Legends" to be "basically I don't" and there it was at the end of the last interview.

jayd16 7y ago

I'm more curious to hear about what its like to work at Riot but on any of the other games.

cranium 7y ago

I used to enjoy reading the bugfixes section in the patch notes. They make me wonder "how the heck is this game implemented ?!" due to the weirdly specific interactions. Eg: Winter Wonder Neeko will no longer lose a significant amount of base stats and the ability to basic attack when Lulu uses W - Whimsy on her as Neeko is using R - Pop Blossom while disguised. -> A character using a specific skin is affected by a specific spell when this character is in a specific form casting a specific spell. (Btw, I don't know how the bug was even found.) (Coming from a 4 months old patch: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-9-20-notes/ https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch...)

BigolJones 7y ago

Ironically I was listening to an interview about working at riot (the one with darmar). It did sound like there were no major flaws, which is pretty impossible ain't it. Reading the discussion proved the point I guess.

Areibman 7y ago

I spent a few days at Riot for one of their hackathons. First of all, the entire space feels like a video game inspired theme park. It's really unlike anything I've seen before. While I can't speak to what the daily routine looks like, I was blown away by how passionate Rioters were about shipping great software and UX. I spoke with one of the lead designers for the Ezreal re-work, and it's shocking to learn just how much effort goes into every minor detail. They do everything in their power to ensure users love the product. That's not the kind of culture you find at your typical software shop. Also, Riot has an excellent developer community and API[0]. Riot believes that the community, not just the engineering staff, makes the product great. So, a lot of effort goes into making sure 3rd party developers can work with the LoL brand. [0] https://developer.riotgames.com https://developer.riotgames.com