Teamfight Tactics product lead parts ways with Riot Games

Riot Games’ Teamfight Tactics product lead Richard “MapleNectar” Henkel has parted ways with the company. This news came via a Twitter post on Friday afternoon. As a previous member of the League of Legends balance team, he leaves a goodbye note to all summoners.

A quick update: pic.twitter.com/Lo6XYiZm7C

— Odyssey Maple (@OdysseyMaple) January 17, 2020

Some history with Riot Games

Henkel had joined Riot Games five years ago as lead of the Summoner’s Rift gameplay team. His responsibilities at Riot had included the bi-weekly patches for Summoner’s Rift, gameplay additions, balance, and “Kind of holistically how Summoner’s Rift feels to play.” He had left the gameplay team to move on to work for Teamfight Tactics. He is known to share Teamfight Tactics news and updates with his followers on social media. As his League of Legends community grew, he gained many followers and fans throughout the years.

Appreciative of his fans

In his post, Henkel states that he is leaving Riot to spend more time with his family in Canada: “Your feedback, comments, and vaguely menacing private messages over the years have been greatly appreciated, and I’ll miss them tremendously… You’ve taught me so much about what it means to be a dev, including how much more there is to learn.”

Henkel has expressed his appreciation before, as back on the tenth anniversary of League of Legends, he said, “Every single one of you has helped make League the incredible game that it is today, and today is a testament to what we’ve built together.”

Future plans

Henkel is wishing to continue his career in game development. He shares his goals with the rest of the community: “I hope to start a studio that can recreate even a small fraction of the magic that I’ve seen during my time working at Riot.” He ends the note as he passes on the torch to his teammates: “In the meantime, however, I’m going to take some time away from live game development … knowing that TFT is in remarkably capable hands.” The Teamfight Tactics team is currently working on a big project to bring the game to mobile users by March 2020.

To sum up, he is going to spend time with his wife and kids. Good luck, and we hope to see you on the rift again very soon!

My 3 year old has discovered how to command Alexa to play "baby shark" and to turn to volume up…welp…time to move off the grid

— Odyssey Maple (@OdysseyMaple) November 9, 2019