Riot Games

Riot acquired Hypixel Studios in April 2020, which it had been investing in over the previous eighteen months to help it publish Hytale, a voxel-based sandbox game. Also in April, Riot announced plans to establish a Singapore office later that year. Riot Games Singapore is to support Riot's existing titles and will have a major focus on developing the company's newer titles. Jason Bunge was hired as Riot Games' chief marketing officer in October 2020. In October 2021, the company bought Kanga, a services firm involved in "fan hubs", merchandising, and content aggregation.

Riot Games collaborated with French animation studio Fortiche to release an animated series, Arcane. The series was released worldwide in November 2021 on Netflix, and by parent company Tencent in China, and received a favorable critical reception.

In March 2022, Riot Games announced that it had invested in Fortiche and, as a result, its chief content officer Brian Wright and director of corporate development Brendan Mulligan were joining Fortiche's board of directors. That same month, Riot also hired executives from Netflix, Paramount, and HBO Max to head development of film, TV, and music endeavors built around the company's intellectual property.

In October 2022, Riot acquired Wargaming Sydney—a subsidiary of Cyprus-based Wargaming that had originally developed the MMO middleware BigWorld—for an undisclosed amount, and renamed it Riot Sydney. The acquisition excludes rights to the BigWorld technology itself, as well as its publishing arm.

In January 2023, Riot Games cut 46 employees in a round of layoffs. In the same month, it suffered a cyberattack that stole source code for League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and an anti-cheat platform. The hackers in question put the stolen data up for sale on the dark web for US$700,000. In 2023, several games under the Riot Forge label were released, including The Mageseeker by Digital Sun, and Song of Nunu by Tequila Works. In September 2023, Dylan Jadeja became company CEO.

Riot announced in January 2024 that it would be laying off 530 employees, or about 11% of its workforce, as well as sunsetting the Riot Forge effort as well as its planned Twitch competitor, Riot Esports Network (REN). Jadeja stated the rationale for the layoffs: "A decision like this has a massive impact on people's lives and on the culture of Riot. We're not doing this to appease shareholders or to hit some quarterly earnings number – we've made this decision because it's a necessity. It's what we need to do in order to maintain a long-term focus for players." In May 2024, the company was sued in the California federal court over its partnership with bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Lawyers for the plaintiff said the claims were brought as their losses from FTX could not be recovered due to the bankruptcy proceedings.

In June 2025, Riot Games announced the closure of Hypixel Studios, the development team behind the sandbox game Hytale, which the company acquired in 2020. After years of development, including a major engine rewrite and a delayed beta originally slated for 2021. Hypixel CEO Aaron Donaghey confirmed that the project could not be completed in a way that honored the original vision, leading to both the cancellation of Hytale and the phased wind‑down of Hypixel Studios.

A proposed settlement was reached in the class-action suit in August 2019, which would include at least US$10 million in damages to women that had been employed at Riot Games over the prior five years. Representatives of the class indicated that they thought it would lead to change, while Riot said that there were other issues not covered by the suit, and that it also intended to resolve the unacknowledged issues.

California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) had been investigating claims of gender discrimination at Riot Games since October 2018. In June 2019, DFEH announced that Riot had denied providing them requested documents and were seeking action to compel these documents, though Riot responded by saying that it complied with all DFEH requests. Upon word of the settlement, the department filed a complaint with the court that stated they believed the settlement was far too low, estimating that the lawsuit potentially could have been worth as much as US$400 million. The state's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement also filed a complaint, believing the settlement would release Riot from labor liabilities that had been raised by the lawsuit. Both complaints urged the court to reject the proposed settlement. Riot dismissed the DFEH's larger value to the suit, and denied charges raised by the DFEH that it had colluded with the class's lawyer to reduce the amount it would pay through the settlement.

As a result of the state's findings that the terms of the settlement should have been valued higher, the class withdrew the proposed US$10 million settlement and dropped their original legal counsel, bringing on new lawyers who had been involved in prior lawsuits related to the Me Too movement in February 2020. In response, Riot said it found the US$10 million figure "fair and adequate under the circumstances" after analysis, but were remaining committed to reaching a resolution. In August 2021, DFEH asserted that Riot was interfering in their ongoing investigations by falsely informing employees that they could not speak to DFEH directly; while the court ordered Riot to issue a memo to all employees that they legally could speak to DFEH, Riot had yet to comply with this order. By the end of 2021, Riot had agreed to a new settlement with the DFEH and employees of $100 million, with $80 million going to the impacted employees. The settlement was approved in July 2022. Riot will compensate 1,548 female employees between $2,500 and $40,000 each as part of the settlement.

Riot and Laurent were sued by Laurent's former assistant in January 2021 on sexual discrimination charges, which included inappropriate language and labor mistreatment. Riot opened an investigation by three members of its board of directors into Laurent's behavior in response to the lawsuit. They reported in March 2021 that "We concluded that there was no evidence that Laurent harassed, discriminated, or retaliated against the plaintiff. We have therefore concluded that at the current time … no action should be taken against Laurent."

Alienware, which had sponsored Riot's League of Legends esports events, ended its partnership with Riot a year earlier than their contract term in March 2021 due to the ongoing litigation over the sexual harassment allegations.

Dispute over forced arbitration clauses

Riot has also been criticized by its employees for requiring the use of forced arbitration in its employment contracts as a result of the gender discrimination lawsuit. Riot allowed employees to speak anonymously with the press, and indicated its intent to use town hall meetings and smaller group discussions with Roseboro and employees to determine future action. Riot also committed to removing mandatory arbitration in new employee contracts and potentially for existing ones after the current litigation had been settled. Additionally, Riot established a 90-day plan starting in May 2019 to continue to address internal issues related to diversity and inclusion. Despite this, over one hundred Riot employees staged their walkout on May 6, 2019, demanding that Riot end forced arbitration for all past and current employees as well. About two weeks following the walkout, Riot reverted its position, saying that it will not change forced arbitration in existing agreements while the current litigation against the company is ongoing.

Freedom of expression

In the context of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, Riot Games took action to discourage political statements during its live events, claiming that overt statements on politics, religion, and other sensitive topics "cannot be fairly represented in the forum [their] broadcast provides", and has asserted that the company bears responsibility for ensuring "that statements or actions on [their] official platforms [...] do not escalate potentially sensitive situations."

In 2019, players discovered that words that are politically sensitive in China, including Tiananmen and Uyghur, were censored in League of Legends. The censorship varied by server and language, with some restrictions being lifted after complaints were posted to Reddit.

George Floyd

In June 2020, Ron Johnson, Riot Games' global head of consumer products, shared a Facebook post that claimed George Floyd had been murdered by police "because of his criminal lifestyle". The company subsequently placed Johnson on leave to conduct an investigation, after which Johnson resigned from the company.

Sponsorship with Saudi Arabian city

Riot had announced a planned partnership with the developing city of Neom in Saudi Arabia in July 2020, with the city to sponsor the upcoming League of Legends European Championship series. Shortly after the announcement, fans of the game, as well as Riot employees, criticized the company over social media and their streaming channels over the partnership, citing Saudi Arabia's record on human rights and the violent attempts to evict the Howeitat tribe from the area during the city's construction. Riot canceled the partnership within a few days in response, apologizing and saying that the partnership had been rushed.

Marketing using a character’s mental health struggles

Riot was criticized for marketing a new League of Legends character, Seraphine, by creating an in-character Twitter account in which it alluded to her struggles with her mental health, including low self-esteem, anxiety, and impostor syndrome. Some wrote that the account was an attempt to trick players into feeling close to her in an attempt to advertise. Creative director Patrick Morales said that, although he was "proud" of the members of the team who worked on the campaign, it had "an unintended impact outside of the narrative we wanted to tell".

Response to Russian invasion of Ukraine

After Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Riot Games did not withdraw from the Russian market after being asked to do so by Ukrainian politician Mykhailo Fedorov. In March 2022, Riot donated the proceeds from battle passes sold in several of its games, as well as profit from some in-game items, to humanitarian relief organizations operating in Ukraine. According to Riot, these donations totaled $5.4 million.

Litigation

In 2017, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Moonton Technology Co., the developer of the mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, because of copyright infringement, citing similarities between Mobile Legends and League of Legends. The case was initially dismissed in California on account of forum non conveniens. Tencent, on behalf of Riot Games, then filed a new lawsuit in a Chinese court, which ruled in Tencent's favor in July 2018, awarding it $2.9 million in damages.

In October 2019, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Riot Squad Esports LLC, a Chicago-based esports organization founded in March 2019, alleging that Riot Squad intentionally infringed on Riot Games' "Riot" trademark.