League of Legends and Valorant publisher Riot Games have announced the company has a new president, Hoby Darling.
Darling is replacing Dylan Jadeja in the role, though Jadeja is maintaining his CEO status.
According to the statement, Darling will partner with teams across the company in order to unlock creativity and serve players around the world. While the new president hasn’t worked in game development before, he does have experience working in the gaming and esports industries with his diverse background including senior leadership roles at Nike, Logitech, Astro Gaming, SkullCandy, and Volcom.
With Logitech, he co-founded a new division focused on serving esports athletes, creators and future ways to game. Working closely with athletes appears to be a strong theme in his career as he also helped start more athlete-led innovation during his time with Nike. The other major theme of the statement was creativity as it highlighted Darling’s work collaborating with gaming, music, art, and action sport sectors while working for both SkullCandy and Astro Gaming.
Riot Games have historically focused on the wider cultural impact of their games and their players’ interests outside of gaming. The huge-budget animated Netflix series Arcane and LoL World Championship themes made with huge musical stars in Linkin Park, Imagine Dragons, and Lil Nas X reflect that.
While it’s near-impossible to predict what Darling’s reign will entail for the future of the company, the statement suggests he plans on fostering more creativity, innovation, and collaboration with both esports athletes as well as musicians and artists.
Redditors’ doubts about the appointment
Some LoL fans, in particular, are feeling dubious about the news, especially as there is a sentiment held by some in the community that the game has become too focused on making quick profits with controversial releases such as the premium Hall of Legends bundles.
Despite some experience in esports and gaming, one commenter wasn’t impressed with Darling’s background: “A guy from Nike, Skullcandy, and Logitech doesn’t read to me as the less “corporate business guy” shift that we needed to avoid the short term profit driven issues we’ve been running into in the last year or two.”
Another feared that LoL could end up with in-game advertisements: “Dude sounds like a textbook marketer. They’re probably going to keep pushing revenue growth as usual. He sounds like he’s involved in ad integrations. Aka they’re gonna milk the game dry. Probably less intrusive way but still going to milk it.”
There was, however, one Redditor who, instead of speculating, decided to remain hopeful: “Please let this be good news for the future of the game, skin quality and so on.”
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
