Riot Games is preparing to shut down its last global data centers as it transitions to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The League of Legends and Valorant developer began its multi-year plan to phase out its owned and operated data centers in 2017. Since then, it decommissioned 14 data centers around the world. Two of these centers, Las Vegas and Chile, were shut down in the last month. The remaining centers in Turkey and Brazil will be shuttered in the coming months.
According to Brent Rich, head of global infrastructure and operations at Riot Games, the advantages of AWS came into focus in 2019. Riot was preparing to launch Teamfight Tactics and Valorant. The developer’s original plan was to launch 40 global data centers as a low-latency solution was essential for Valorant.
“At that time the belief was that metal was the way to go for performance reasons, but there’s so much complexity in owning and operating data centers, even without bringing automation into the equation. We wanted to figure out how we could get the same level of performance out of the cloud,” Rich said.
After showing that AWS performed at the same level as physical data centers (and provided added flexibility), Riot got internal buy-in to make the switch.
Riot and AWS partnership’s broad reach
Riot’s partnership with AWS goes further than just being its official cloud services provider. AWS is also Riot’s official Cloud Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Machine Learning (ML) and Cloud Deep Learning (DL) provider.
Additionally, AWS plays a key role in Riot’s broadcasting technology for its various esports leagues. For League of Legends Worlds 2023, AWS sponsored (and calculated) a Win Probability statistic for the broadcast.