Riot Games’ co-founder and former CEO is its new president of games. Marc Merrill, who co-founded the League of Legends studio back in 2006 with Brandon Beck, will soon oversee all of its ongoing and future gaming projects, Merrill announced on Twitter on Thursday.
The president of games role will put Merrill at the head of Riot’s now extensive list of titles. According to tweets from Riot CEO, Nicolo Laurent, Merrill will oversee League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, Wild Rift, and Legends of Runeterra, as well as Riot’s list of in-development titles like the fighting game Project L and the unnamed Runeterra MMO. Riot’s also notorious for having quite a few projects in various stages of research and development at any given time, which Merrill will also oversee.
In a statement on Merrill’s new role, Laurent said, “we have ambitious goals for Riot’s next phase of growth — it’s truly just the beginning for our live games and we also plan to enter a few other, very different genres — and Marc is the perfect person to lead our games teams in delivering those incredible experiences for players.”
Merrill was Riot’s CEO until 2017, when he and Beck moved to the roles of co-chairmen. Since then, Merrill has worked on various projects throughout the company, including League of Legends’ 10 year Anniversary event in 2019, where Riot first showed some of its upcoming games, including Valorant. Merrill also played an important role starting Riot’s entertainment division and producing its animated Netflix series, Arcane, which was released last year to critical and commercial acclaim.
This new position will see Merrill move away from larger projects like these, in favor of working on the day-to-day development of all of Riot’s titles.
Source: Polygon
