At which university did Riot founders Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill become friends?

Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill became friends at the University of Southern California. The future Riot Games founders were roommates there while studying business, an experience that helped form the partnership behind League of Legends.

Their early interest was not simply in making another one-off game. They admired Defense of the Ancients and believed a game could be supported, updated, and monetized over many years. That idea became Riot Games, founded in Santa Monica in September 2006.

The USC connection is sometimes confused with the location of Riot's founding or with the schools listed as distractors. USC is the university where Beck and Merrill met and became friends; Riot itself was later established in California as a game company. The pair recruited early talent from the DotA community and released League of Legends in 2009.

Tencent first invested in Riot in 2011 and eventually became its parent company. The founders' university friendship therefore predates both Riot and the global success of its flagship game.