Riot Games has announced its acquisition of Sydney-based Wargaming Studios and will rename the company as Riot Sydney.

The League of Legends and Valorant developer and publisher have been on a roll this past year, and to add to this, they continue to expand as they acquire Wargaming’s Sydney studio. The studio will be renamed Riot Sydney and is a global development powerhouse with experience creating next-generation game development tools and servers, world-leading games, and some R&D projects, as well as prototypes for new game features, add-ons, and console ports.

“We are really excited to bring these talented developers and teams to Riot, the Rioters that have had the opportunity to work with members of the Sydney team are confident not only in the tech they’ve built over the years but, more importantly, in the people who’ve built it. Naz (Naresh Hirani, Head of Development, Riot Sydney) and the dev teams at the studio have a long history of working in ways that will complement Riot’s ability to deliver value to our players and we really look forward to collaborating with them.”

– Marc Merrill, Co-Founder, and President at Riot Games

The newly established Riot Sydney will use their considerable expertise to further augment the League of Legends, Valorant, and tech teams at Riot. 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. Under Molly’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.

“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. I know I speak for the whole team when I say how excited we all are to become part of Riot and help deliver amazing experiences to players.”

– Naresh Hirani, Head of Development at Riot Sydney

The studio is one of the largest development studios in Australia and has worked on World of Tanks, World of Warships, and many more titles across consoles and PC. The studio’s award-winning tech, Bigworld Technology, was the catalyst for becoming part of Wargaming in 2012. Before this, Bigworld Technology was powering 30+ MMOs and online games and also held the Guinness World Record for Most Players Online Simultaneously on one MMO Server. Wargaming will maintain ownership of and continue the use of Bigworld Technology for its products.

The studio was purchased by Wargaming in 2012 for US$45 million.

The acquisition comes 10 years after Bigworld joined Wargaming and helped the studio create some of the world’s most popular games. The studio has over 25 years of gaming experience in Australia and has proven to be one of the most innovative teams in the region and industry.

The studio’s entire development staff will join Riot Sydney, while the existing publishing team will remain a part of Wargaming.

Wargaming is best known for its experience in developing next-gen game development tools as well as AAA games and research and development projects as well as their iconic games such as World of Tanks and World of Warships.