Riot Games Culture Page Updated in Response to Gender Discrimination Accusations

The developer of the massively popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) PC game League of Legends, Riot Games, recently made public a new set of company values on its website. This comes after the company was the focus of a scathing article detailing what was described as a “sexist bro culture” by anonymous female employees.

Accusations of Sexist Culture

The infamous article, which was published by Kotaku in August of 2018, featured a story by a woman who went by the pseudonym Lacy, a former employee of Riot Games who noticed a severe lack of women in management positions and made it her goal to get one hired or promoted to such a position. No matter the qualifications of the candidate she would propose, a male candidate of equal or lesser qualifications would always get the position. In another instance, she proposed an idea that was dismissed until she had a male coworker propose the same idea to the same group of superiors days later.

Lacy, however, was not the only subject of the article, which cited 28 current and former employees of Riot Games as reporting similar behaviors within the company culture. All in all, the picture painted was that Riot Games culture at the time did not respect women, treated them unfairly, and allowed vulgar conversations about the female employees to proliferate via internal emails and closed-door meetings. When asked to comment on these accusations, Riot Games responded with a lengthy statement denying such a culture existed.

In fact, Riot Games is currently being investigated by the state of California for claims of “alleged unequal pay, sexual harassment, sexual assault, retaliation and gender discrimination in selection and promotion.”

A Change for the Better

However, Riot Games culture appears to be taking a turn, at least according to the new Riot Games values page on the company’s official website. The webpage includes terms such as “diversity” and “inclusion” to describe the culture of the company and includes several photos of its diverse employees. One in particular features a female employee who is apparently in the midst of giving a presentation.

A subpage goes further into the company’s dedication to inclusion, stating the company belief “that we must call out sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, religious discrimination, and bigotry of all kinds” in addition to other beliefs. Furthermore, the page states that “sometimes we’ve fallen short of making these beliefs a reality. We launched this page so that everyone can see that we are backing up our words with actions and can keep track of our progress” in an apparent nod to the 2018 article published by Kotaku.

The company has stated that this new Riot Games culture statement comes as a result of some soul-searching and conversations with over a thousand Riot Games employees about what they want the company to represent and be going forward.

In the year since the original article came out, the change in culture has apparently been successful. No new accusations have risen to the public’s awareness.