League of Legends MMO lead leaves Riot Games after nine years

(Image credit: Riot Games)

The lead of the League of Legends MMO has announced he's leaving developer Riot Games.

In a tweet posted on March 7, Greg Street confirmed that he has "decided to step down from [his] role at Riot Games," where he served as executive producer on the MMO project.

Street went on to say that "a combo of personal and professional considerations led me down this path." A number of personal issues meant that Street said he wanted to "be closer to my surviving family." He also, however, said that "after nine years at Riot it feels like it's time for something new."

"I said from the beginning that building a League of Legends MMO worthy of you all was going to be a long journey. The MMO is in good hands and it's the right time to hand over the reigns for the next phase."

Street took on the role several years ago, having spent time at Riot after a career at Blizzard, and specifically World of Warcraft. For all the excitement around the project, however, he has also made clear that there are no guarantees that the game will ever come out, and that Riot could cancel the project if it doesn't deliver on expectations, having pointed out that nothing is certain in game development.

In a message after Street's departure, co-founder Marc Merrill confirmed that the game is "still in early development, but we have a direction that we're very excited about," and that "it will still be a VERY long road to get there."

Meet the lore expert mapping out the League of Legends MMO years before its developers.

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I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.