Former Riot Games leaders found The Believer Company, a new game studio

Backed by Riot and other big investors

The Believer Company is a new development studio for video games led by former Riot Games executives Michael Chow and Steven Snow. Their project has garnered the interest of several big investors, securing $55 million in Series A Funding for the company from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreesen Horowitz, Bitkraft Ventures, Riot Games, 1Up Ventures, Cleveland Avenue, Tornante Company, and others.

The studio is working on a “next-generation open-world game” set in an original IP. We shouldn’t expect any additional information on that project in the very near future, though, as the company is still busy putting together the full team to build this title. The company’s website doesn’t really offer any hints, depicting artwork with both fantasy and sci-fi aspects.

The Believer Company is working fully remote and currently has lots of job openings in creative, design, production, and engineering roles.

The studio's Latin motto translates as "I believe in games." / The Believer Company

Michael Chow, who formerly served as Vice President of Riot Games and Executive Producer of League of Legends: Wild Rift, is the studio’s CEO and will be joined by many former Rioters in this new venture. Among them are CPO Steven Snow, the former Executive Producer of League of Legends and one of Riot Games’ co-founders, CTO Landon McDowell, COO Tim Hsu, CMO Shankar Gupta-Harrison, Director of Operations Grace Park, and VP of Design Jeff Jew. CCO Jeremy Vanhoozer brings experience from Bungie and EA to the team.

“Players are the best audience to serve in the world. They’re noble, smart, discerning, and infinitely inventive,” commented Chow. “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.”

"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," Snow stated. "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.”