Riot Games has acquired Wargaming Sydney, now simply called Riot Sydney
The publishing team will stay at Wargaming.
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League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that it has acquired World of Tanks studio Wargaming Sydney.
Riot Games has announced today, October 17, that as part of its acquisition the studio will be renamed Riot Sydney, which will use its "considerable expertise to further augment the League of Legends, Valorant, and tech teams at Riot," according to a press release. "The studio will be a key contributor to Riot's Development Studios organization under industry veteran and Riot’s Head of Development Studios, Molly Mason-Boule."
The press release notes that under Mason-Boule's leadership, "Riot is expanding its approach to global development, and over time, Riot is looking forward to growing the game industry in Australia and will also continue to explore similar opportunities to add expert talent from veteran studios."
It's specifically the development team will be joining Riot, as the publishing team will stay at Wargaming.
In a statement, head of development Nareshi Hirani at what is now called Riot Sydney said, "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. 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."
Prior to joining Riot, the studio had assisted on titles like World of Tanks and World of Warships using its Bigworld Technology, an underlying software architecture that helps developers build MMO's and online games, an obviously big part of what Riot does considering its biggest titles are Valorant and League of Legends.
It's important to note that in 2018, a report from Kotaku outlined huge problems with the culture of sexism at Riot Games, which eventually resulted in a gender discrimination lawsuit that settled at $100 million. At the start of the year Riot outlined its plans for the next five years as a company, though how much things have changed is still unclear at this time.