Joe Ziegler has jumped companies, revealing on Twitter that he has left Riot Games entirely, and taken on a new role in Sony-owned game studio Bungie.
Joe shared this statement on his Twitter account:
“Update: Happy to announce my new home is at Bungie working on new stuff that hopefully will one day get to be played by you all. Much <3.”
Valorant is Riot Games’ take on the first person hero shooter, upping the ante up to five versus five games. It had come into the scene with way too close a resemblance to Blizzard’s own take on the genre in Overwatch, so much so that fans were calling foul.
However, Valorant would go on to carve out its own niche in the market and differentiate itself based on the differences in Riot’s objectives and philosophies in making a team shooter, compared to Overwatch. In particular, Valorant puts a lot more focus on teaching beginners the skills to play first person shooters. Overwatch throws in a lot more use of hero abilities, which include melee and spells that change up how the game is played from a traditional shooter.
Ziegler is credited for coming up with the idea for Valorant while Riot was workshopping ideas for new games. He also led development of the project alongside David Nottingham.
While most fans will remember betas for Valorant going live on 2018, Riot actually started work on it in 2014. Valorant spent an incredible six years in development before its final release, and that seemingly took a lot out of Ziegler.
Around the end of 2021, Ziegler announced he was stepping down as director for Valorant, and giving the position up to Andy Ho. He had also apparently been working on a new project for the company, but that game had never been disclosed. If that Ziegler project was not cancelled, it is likely this was actually Project L, the fighting game with Riot Games characters that is still in the middle of development.
Ziegler has also dropped few clues on what he is working on in Bungie now. This leaves fans with speculation on what this could be.
We had reported on rumors that Bungie is working on a new mobile game with NetEase, in the Destiny universe. Bungie also shared a job opening for a different Destiny game, this one apparently a competitive title.
Ziegler’s new project could be neither of these things as well. Whatever it will be, Valorant fans are sure to be eagerly anticipating it.
