The LoL MMO is alive, looking for veterans for development, should “inspire millions of players around the world”

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After the reboot and the layoffs at Riot in 2024, some fans of the MMORPG genre may be wondering what the situation is with the ambitious MMO project for League of Legends. Now there was a sign of life!

What is this sign of life? There have recently been two new jobs on the Riot Games career portal that are linked to the League of Legends MMO project (via riotgames.com). On the one hand, we are looking for a Principal UX Designer, and on the other hand, a Staff Software Engineer for Unreal Tools.

One or two additional nuggets of information can be gleaned from the two job descriptions:

  • The Principal UX Designer is expected to develop innovative and player-focused UI designs “that delight millions of gamers around the world.”
  • Both positions will be filled by veterans with six or seven years of industry experience and have made significant contributions to at least one published game.
  • In the best case scenario, the Principal UX Designer should have already built the user interface for an MMO and be familiar with the League of Legends universe.

    • Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is no longer responsible for the LoL MMO and is now working on the MMORPG “Ghost” with his own studio.

    Ghostcrawler introduces its new development studio in the video

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    Layoffs apparently have no impact on the LoL MMO

    Why were there question marks over the LoL MMO? After several years of development, Marc Merrill, the head of Riot Games, explained in March 2024 that a restart had to be announced for the League of Legends MMO.

    Project lead Ghostcrawler had already left Riot Games and the MMORPG in March 2023. Apparently there were problems with the ability to work from home. Ghostcrawler wanted to be with the family again after strokes of fate. He is now working with his own studio on the new MMORPG Ghost.

    These setbacks have been accompanied by two waves of layoffs in the current gaming year. At the beginning of 2024, a whopping 530 employees had to leave. In mid-October there were the next layoffs, which are said to have affected a total of 32 Riot employees (via eurogamer.net). 27 of the 32 employees most recently worked on the League of Legends team.

    These two waves of layoffs do not seem to have any direct impact on the MMO project. The job applications underline that the game is still being worked on. Due to the reboot, it is unfortunately unclear what of all the information that Ghostcrawler had revealed over the past few years is still valid. If you would like to get an impression of what the LoL MMO was originally supposed to be, take a look here: Everything we knew about the new MMORPG for LoL until March 2024

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