Former Riot Games Executives Form New Studio The Believer to Develop Next-Gen Open-World Game - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 March 2023 / 2,576 Views
Former Riot Games executives have established a new studio based in Los Angeles called The Believer Company.
The studio is developing a "next-generation open-world game" based on an original IP, where player choices matter. The game will feature gameplay that "bring players together rather than [push] them apart."
The studio has raised $55 million in Series A Funding from Bitkraft Ventures, Riot Games, 1Up Ventures, Don Thompson’s Cleveland Avenue, Michael D. Eisner’s Tornante Company, and other venture partners.
"Players are the best audience to serve in the world." said The Believer Company CEO Michael Chow. "They’re noble, smart, discerning, and infinitely inventive. We hold their investments of time, skill, and hard-earned money as sacred, and we will always put their needs first at every stage of Believer’s journey. We look forward to growing our team with people as passionate as we are and we are actively seeking like-minded talent to believe with us.
"I couldn’t be more excited to begin this journey with Steven. He’s a loving, stalwart champion of players—at times viciously protective of their best interests. There’s no better flag-bearer for what we’re setting out to do."
The Believer Company CTO Steven Snow added, "The last few years have brought forward some very exciting technologies. In our world, where the player is the focus, our goal is to bring select technologies into the development and gameplay spaces explicitly for the betterment of our players and the games they love.
"Bringing free-to-play to North America and Europe with League of Legends really changed the landscape of how games as a service could work. It is our privilege to have the opportunity to help shape the future responsibly. And we are excited to say ‘no fucking thanks’ to the technologies that won’t make the game more fun.”
Here is the list of the studio's leadership:
- Michael Chow as CEO – Former Riot Games vice president, former executive producer on League of LEgends: Wild Rift, and co-founder of Words with Friends developer Newtoy
- Steven Snow as chief product officer – Founding member of Riot Games who built the studio’s player-focused culture and former executive producer of League of Legends
- Landon McDowell as chief technology officer – Formerly of Microsoft, Riot Games, Linden Lab
- Jeremy Vanhoozer as chief corporate officer – Formerly of Bungie, Electronic Arts
- Tim Hsu as chief operating officer – Formerly of Twitter, Riot Games
- Shankar Gupta-Harrison as chief managing officer – Formerly of Riot Games, Dentsu X
- Grace Park as director of operations – formerly of League of Legends: Wild Rift
- Jeff Jew as vice president of design – Formerly of League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Next-gen? We are barely 2 years into this gen, they already talking about next? Gives them a bit of time I guess.
I mean makes sense if they are just founding a studio now and just starting to work on the game. Presumably a very large open world game its gonna take a number of years to build it so it would either be late current gen or start of next gen, I guess they are just giving themselves all the time in the world by not assuming it'll be on current gen.
Most game releases have not yet stopped being on last gen. I don´t think general audience language is precise enough to simultaneously keep track of 3 different generations. So the phrase ´next gen´ can very reasonably mean exclusive to PS5 / XBS and equivalent PC spec. Now if it releases around end of this generation, it may be silly to call it ´next gen´ at that time, if a new ´next gen´ is being actively developed at that time, but at this point in time I would not be surprised by PS5/XBS exclusive games to be designated as ´next gen´ to distinguish them from previous games which have until now run on PS4/XBO.
