Riot Games' founders are ditching their management roles and returning to making games

Riot Games founders Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill and Brandon "Ryze" Beck have announced that they're transitioning away from their current managerial roles within the company to refocus their attention back toward creating games.

"When we founded Riot eleven years ago", the pair explained in a statement posted on the Riot Game website, "we spent virtually every waking hour of the day (and night!) thinking about how to make League of Legends as great of an experience as possible. As League started having success however, Riot Games grew from those humble beginnings where we could feed the whole team with a handful of pizzas to now having over 2,500 Rioters across 20 offices around the world."

While that has certainly had its benefits (probably not least the fact that League of Legends now hosts over 100 million active monthly players), it's meant that Tryndamere and Ryze have been largely focussed on managing Riot in recent years, rather than making game - which, they say, "is what we really love to do."

To that end, Tryndamere and Ryze have announced their intention to transition to roles which will allow them to focus "on creating incredible experiences for players". Day-to-day operations of Riot Games will fall to Dylan Jadeja (CFO), Scott Gelb (CTO), and Nicolo Laurent (President), described as "three are longtime Rioters who have been integral to shaping our company's vision, strategy, and culture over the last decade".

As for Tryndamere and Ryze's first project in their new roles, that's still unknown. However, the pair says it's looking forward to finally putting "the 's' in Riot Games".