Marc Merrill on tyler1's stream - "We've been annihilating the League team, and we're improving it quite a bit" "The team calcified, we had shitty leadership"

Hey everyone, let me add some context to what I was talking to Tyler about.

To take a step back, Riot has grown a lot over the past several years both in some good ways and also in some ways that were not great. Projects were spun up that didn’t make sense for the company to pursue, the company’s structure had changed which created operating silos, our teams were struggling to collaborate really effectively across the new org lines and yes, in pockets, in my opinion we were complacent. A lot of new people had joined and we weren’t doing enough to onboard and support them in the right ways. Additionally, given all the growth and expansion, many Rioters were battlefield promoted and took on a lot of larger responsibilities without being sufficiently prepared for those expanded roles, but they were trying their best. 

All of that manifests in inconsistent execution over time where we let our players down. Is this all ultimately my fault? Yes. We put all of the leadership in place and so we are responsible. This is why I rejoined the company in an operating role. There have been a bunch of things moving in the wrong direction and ultimately we have had to make changes across the company to get things back on track. 

To be clear, many Rioters have been working their asses off the whole time and have been just as frustrated with our missteps as many of you have been I’m sure. My intention with saying to Tyler that we’ve been making changes was intended to acknowledge to him that I believe we’ve been failing our players and aren’t taking that lightly, nor are any of Riot’s leaders. 

The silver lining here is that many changes have been made and I believe the positives from all of those changes will be felt over time. I’m incredibly optimistic about the future for League, Riot and all of our products and Rioters are feeling the same way. I hope that over the coming months that optimism that we all have for what is cooking will be shared by all of you, but at the end of the day, it’s about our actions, not our words.

Adding: The other thing is that what I meant with “annihilating” was that we have been making significant changes to League. I can see how that hyperbolic word choice can feel insensitive and I apologize for that, as it is not what I meant.

Yes. Keep in mind though that there has been a lot of internal discussion about the changes that have been happening and why, so Rioters are aware and have been engaged in driving the changes because we're all aligned that we owe it to our players to keep upping our game.

Different parts of it will show improvement at different time horizons because League is a live game. There will be improvements in both 2025 and 2026 that hopefully will be quite significant.

I don’t have a big enough streamer audience to make the raid team prolly lol

It has been a catalyst for me to get a basic streaming setup again - so you can all stop by and yell at me (or say hi 👋 )