We haven't heard much about Riot's League of Legends MMO—basically nothing, if you get down to it—but it's still alive and kicking, and today it kicked again: Brian Holinka, who spent more than a decade at Blizzard, including nearly five years as the lead combat designer on World of Warcraft, has joined the dev team.
"Today is my first official day at Riot on the League of Legends MMO!" Holinka wrote on LinkedIn (via PCGamesN). And, well, that's the extent of it, except that the page indicates Holinka is now employed as principal game designer on the League of Legends MMO.
Holinka actually left Blizzard in 2023 and joined Fantastic Pixel Castle, the studio founded that same year by former Riot Games vice president Greg Street. Prior to his departure from Riot, Street had been heading up development of the League of Legends MMO, and Fantastic Pixel Castle's debut project was also meant to be an MMO—but that fell apart when NetEase ended funding in 2025.
The hiring of Holinka comes less than five months after Riot added former World of Warcraft lead producer Raymond Bartos to its MMO development team, and confirms continued turning-of-the-wheels on the game. Riot has never formally suggested those wheels weren't turning, to be clear, but the League MMO was revealed in December 2020 and it's been pretty much dead silence ever since, except that Street—the guy who announced the game in the first place—was leaving. Riot previously added former WoW lead software engineer Orlando Salvatore to its roster in October 2024.
Street, for the record, also apparently has a new gig in the games industry, although he hasn't yet revealed what it is. He did say on his own LinkedIn page that "it's not an MMO, at least not yet."
