Last year, Riot Games acquired Hypixel Studios, which they had been investing in over the previous three semesters, to help them publish Hytale, a voxel-based sandbox game. And, by May 2008, Riot Games would already employ over 2,500 people, in 24 offices around the world. Three years later, there were more than 100 million players.
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By 2013, League of Legends was already the most-played multiplayer PC game in the world. And the remaining 7 percent was purchased by the Chinese company in December 2015. In 2011, with the success of the game, Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games. League of Legends was officially launched in 2009, as a free-to-play game, so that the company could make adjustments based on player feedback. One of the investors was the Chinese holding company Tencent, which would later become its distributor in China. The idea generated several rounds of new investments, which resulted in a total contribution of $8 million. Riot Games created League of Legends as the flagship of a video game company rooted in e-commerce. And Riot’s first major signing was Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, one of the early developers of DotA Allstars (a pioneer in the MOBA genre). To start the venture, Beck and Merrill raised funds together with their families and angel investors, totalizing $1.5 million to launch the company, which opened its office in 2006 in Santa Monica, California. So, they decided that the game would be monetized through additional perks that would offer a more personalized experience, such as changing clothes and characters’ appearance. Nevertheless, the founders agreed that they did not want to make the mistake of selling upgrades that players should achieve through skill in the game. So, Beck and Merrill decided that they would start a game company focused on the interests of players, which would always bring updates and new features to their games, instead of launching new options on the market. However, what bothered Beck and Merrill in the realm of games was that the developers’ standard was basically to launch game after game, instead of evading those who already had fans, who would prefer to keep playing new updated versions of their favorite games, rather than just shutting them down and having to go after a new replacement. The founders of Riot Games, Brandon “Ryze” Beck and Marc “Tryndamere” became friends when they were roommates studying business at the University of Southern California, and much of their affinity was born out of the fact that they were both video game enthusiasts. The most curious part about the history of Riot Games is that the company’s founders developed this idea, still in college, as a result of their personal frustration with the gaming universe.