League of Legends and Valorant Developer Riot Games Acquires New Studio

League of Legends and Valorant developer and publisher Riot Games has officially announced that it has completed its acquisition of Warming Sydney studio, one of the largest development studios in Australia that previously worked on titles like World of Tanks and World of Warships. According to the announcement, the studio will now be known as Riot Sydney and work with the League of Legends, Valorant, and tech teams at Riot as well as Riot’s Development Studios organization.

“We are really excited to bring these talented developers and teams to Riot,” said Marc Merrill, Co-Founder and President of Riot Games, as part of the announcement. “The Rioters that have had the opportunity to work with members of the Sydney team are confident not only in the tech they’ve built over the years but, more importantly, in the people who’ve built it. Naz (Naresh Hirani, Head of Development, Riot Sydney) and the dev teams at the studio have a long history of working in ways that will complement Riot’s ability to deliver value to our players and we really look forward to collaborating with them.”

According to the announcement, the newly dubbed Riot Sydney will help accelerate the development of live games for Riot. It will continue to operate of the studio’s previous office and the entire development staff from prior to the acquisition has joined Riot Sydney. The publishing team, however, remains part of Wargaming. Additionally, Wargaming will continue to own and use Bigworld Technology, tech that helps power online games and MMOs.

“Being part of Wargaming has been a phenomenal journey for us over the last 10 years, and it’s helped our studio grow and thrive,” said Hirani as part of the same announcement. “We were really impressed by the cultural fit we’ve experienced in our dealings with everyone at Riot, and we can’t wait to bring our expertise in global development to the respective teams. I know I speak for the whole team when I say how excited we all are to become part of Riot and help deliver amazing experiences to players.”  

What do you think about the new acquisition by Riot Games? Are you looking forward to seeing what sort of projects Riot Sydney gets involved with at the developer and publisher? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop in order to talk about all things gaming!