Riot Games

Riot Games is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles. Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill founded it in September 2006 to build League of Legends, a free-to-play multiplayer game released in 2009 that became one of the most played PC games in the world. The company later developed other titles, including the first-person shooter Valorant, and ran its own publishing arm, Riot Forge, until January 2024. It operates professional esports leagues around its games and worked with the studio Fortiche on Arcane, an animated television series set in the League of Legends universe. The Chinese conglomerate Tencent acquired a controlling stake in 2011 and bought the remainder in 2015. Riot has also faced public criticism over workplace culture.