Opened in June 2024, Riot Games’ Mercer Island, Washington, office is designed to take employees and visitors into the world of VALORANT, a popular title from the company’s library. As a place built to meet the needs of software engineers, game designers, artists, and core business teams, the new office accommodates around 370 people. It emphasizes modular spaces for working areas and offers unique options for employees to unwind.
Riot’s Mercer Island Office is one of two offices in the greater Seattle area. The company’s Remote Broadcast Center, powered by AWS, opened in 2023, though it’s more of a production studio than an office, and Riot has had an employee presence in the area for a few years.
As soon as you enter the lobby of the Mercer Island office, a portal-like, orange metallic door opens up to a hallway tunnel with lights that look like the entrance of a spaceship. The lobby and office also contain nods to Kingdom, the fictional company featured in VALORANT. Riot has an internal design team to help build custom materials for the office tied to this theme.
“You’re looking at encapsulated Radianite on the wall here,” Craig Hooker, manager, workplace experience, told Newsweek during a tour of the office, referring to a fictional item from the game. “The goal is to have people super immersed in the culture and what it is to make games.”
The first floor continues the video game theme with metallic walls and signage that feature the VALORANT font and more nods to Kingdom before an entrance to first-floor work areas. It also opens up to a café called Testing Grounds and has stairs that go down to the gym area and up to the second-floor workspaces.
The conference rooms are named after levels from the game and employees also have access to lockers, towel service and a bike room on the downstairs floor. The walls of the work floors contain prints of digital art created by players of Riot Games.
“When employees come in, they get immersed by the IP and they take that into the work they do,” Aaron Poladian, senior manager, construction and real estate, told Newsweek. “They’re envisioning themselves in that world.”
The third-floor cafeteria also hosts company town halls or viewings of major streaming events on two wall-sized, 14.5-foot, high-definition screens on one side. It has also hosted Rock Band competitions, hackathons and an employee science fair. After the many rows of tables, arcade games and some booths sit in the far end across from the entrance.
The office also has a screening room and quiet rooms for people to take breaks, and a pantry modeled after shipping containers that appear in the game. It also has grab-and-go meals available in multiple fridges. Jim Cashman, senior manager, workplace experience, notes that all desks are less than a one-minute walk away from snacks and drinks.
“We’re designing this so employees can create something special and unique and keep investing in our players,” Cashman explained. “We want to create a frictionless environment so they have the ability to go ahead and get whatever they need in the drop of a hat.”
In a decision that is not the case in most offices, all of the bathrooms are individual rooms and all-gender facilities.
“There’s cost associated with the separation (of bathrooms),” Poladian shared. “But it’s important and worthwhile.”
When employees are looking to blow off steam, they can head to a computer café modeled after a Korean-style PC bang, with rows of desktops and a bunch of video game systems to play on.
“We want Rioters to play,” Cashman said. “That’s what we do.”
The other recreation rooms are harder to find; they serve as easter eggs for new employees when they go through orientation.
One is styled like a treehouse, equipped with a 70-inch TV, gaming systems from past and present and a massive library of games. Another “secret” gaming room is meant to draw memories of playing in your grandparents’ den, complete with 70s-style furniture and calendars from that period. Similar secret rooms exist in the other Riot offices as well.
“Bring your kid to work day hits different here,” Poladian said. The company calls it Riotling Day, and it’s celebrated on the same day around the world.
On the second floor, CNC plywood lines the walls, giving a warm feel while also portraying a working theme.
“We were thinking of this site as like a workshop, feeling like a place where people are picking up tools and working on their craft,” Poladian said.
The second-floor entry area has some couches in the center and the walls have the computer generated drawings from players. The workspaces have a mix of assigned, shared and bookable desks and rooms, featuring custom desks designed for the company’s specifications as well as moveable walls and free space that can be turned into desk areas or collaboration suites, easily.
“We like to keep it very flexible, so teams have their ability to create their own spaces,” Hooker said, adding that it offers “a lot of modularity for teams to create exactly what they need to be successful and work how they want to work.”
The first and second floors have a mother’s room, equipped with lactation machines. The second floor also has a quiet room called the AFK or “away from keyboard” room, where people can decompress by playing relaxing music and sitting in comfortable chairs, as well as eight conference rooms named and designed after VALORANT maps.
In addition to the cafeteria, the third floor has about half of its space dedicated to conference and training rooms, which are frequently booked by visiting teams from other offices for large departmental gatherings. All conference rooms are equipped with Google Meet and virtual meeting technology. The basement floor hosts some workspaces as well as the gym, yoga room and the presentation room, which looks like a home theater.
Riot purchased the building at the end of 2021, completing work on design and construction before breaking ground in September 2022 and opening on June 11, 2024. The VALORANT theme was chosen because many people working on that game sit in that office. Launched in 2020, VALORANT started as a five-person team with a code name and has grown much larger since then.
The company’s Los Angeles headquarters is modeled after Runeterra, the fictional world where many of its other games, like League of Legends, Wild Rift and 2XKO exist. Other offices contain immersive themes as well.
“Rioters are making it better to be a player. We’re making it the best place to make games,” Poladian said. “We see a direct correlation between the office space we design and operate and the work they put in for the players.”
