I think you underestimate the cost of doing interviews.
(I can tell you exactly what it would take for me to answer the calls I've had from Riot recruiters; Scott Gelb to have left the company and a complete removal of the arbitration clause for both individual and systematic discrimination of all forms, for both new and existing employees).
Appreciate the thoughts back.
Read moreI appreciate your courage in responding, and I am sorry if you experience any sort of hate because of this comment. I disagree with some of your takes, but I think it's just because it can be hard to understand public perception from outside of an organization. Here are my expanded thoughts:
As far as Scott Gelb, I also can't know what was found in his investigation or how legitimate that investigation was, but it really feels like a "where there's smoke there's fire" situation. What I do know is that there's a difference between my opinion on whether someone did something and whether there is proof to meet a certain standard. Sure, OJ "didn't officially kill someone" but I wouldn't want him to work for me — and I fully acknowledge that is a false equivalency but the spirit is the same. There's a point where you have to take into account that there's a very low likelihood that they're all lying, and that some of the accusations (like the infamous ...
I agree the optics don't look great. But, honestly: our company screwed up and that screw-up shouldn't look good. It's going to be a long, complex walk for us to even begin to make up for the pain some people experienced. I think it's a worthwhile walk and so-far I think we're mostly making steps forward. Give us a few years and let's see where we're at.
Quick reflections back:
1) I agree with the general notion. What I see that you don't see is that there are a lot of internal cases that have been acted on at very high levels. It didn't matter that they were considered important for the business at all. The way the process is set up with the external firm doing the auditing, I don't know how anyone could protect someone. Basically I trust an impartial well-funded external law firm which only has the incentive to find issues to be the best at finding these issues. They found something, but it wasn't fire-able. I basically trust the process because I've seen it have ...
Read moreRead moreHi dzareth, and thanks for responding so in-depth to my answer! I'm glad to hear you find Riot a great place to work! And I do believe that whenever I watch some of the behind the scenes videos of the music or artwork; For example the recently released BTS video of the pantheon rework. It is absolutely amazing to follow stuff like that.
However, keeping that in mind, the gaming industry is very young, these game companies have seen a great deal of success in a very short amount of time. And in this short interval of time they have to take in a lot of people. And I don't want to demonize all of Riot, and say that all they do is burn people out and fart in their faces (it is important to also try to remember that isn't at all the industry remains. Because of this rapid growth, it also means that if the people hired at Riot, Epic Games, etc. aren't unionised and can't defend themselves, some are bound to be screwed over by the company. And this doesn't even surprise me, this...
Yes, that monetary incentive of many groups should be why folks pause and consider the full picture. Honestly, I don't even mind the biased reporting... Riot has screwed up, and we get what we deserve as a company.
Just keep in mind that at Riot we don't really have crunch or temporary 24/7 then fired workforce. We have great employee benefits and healthcare. A great campus with great catering. Our salaries aren't quite as good as tech, but we're also working on our passions and have good work-life balance for the most part. There's great parental leave policies equal for birthing and non-birthing parents. We're responsible with the player money that we're investing--but we are looked after. It's not a perfect workplace. But, it is an open workplace where you can bring up issues and address them. It's because of all this that unionization is a complex topic... I'll just say I just don't think anyone has really made the case for it for me personally. I've heard a lot about ...
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Not sure. I don't think it's because it's too small though... It's a good question.
I appreciate your input and your passion to proactively change the work environment at Riot. If more people acted like you in the past, there wouldn't be this problem in the first place.
Keep fighting the good fight, my dude.
I’m a woman. Thanks.
Read moreFrom someone who has worked in the corporate environment for almost a decade now, I think a lot of the sarcasm and jokes come from the fact that the public perception is that it's just a lot of lip service.
Were any offending people fired? Was there any meaningful change in management? At the end of the day, the responsibility lies squarely on those in leadership if there's a toxic atmosphere. It's exponentially worse if leadership is actively contributing to the toxic environment.
If this exact thing had happened in a government position (for example, the "farting in faces" incident), that manager would've been thrown out faster than you can say "Yee Haw". It reeks of an "old boys club" atmosphere when the toxic members of your work culture are still there.
I've spoken to half a dozen LoL players who are engineers and technical folks and they are all extremely put off of the idea of working at Riot specifically due to how the last year ha...
I’m an engineer who works on LoL. I’m still fired up to work at Riot. I applied before the Kotaku articles came out, was still in the interview process as it blew up, and I had to ask myself the same questions about the company’s integrity and policies. I grilled my interview panel about how they treat and support women, and whether or not they’d support my desire to change the gaming industry from within. Everyone was extremely transparent and willing to discuss the issue. None of it was lip service.
I’ve only ever been empowered since I joined, and some of those tangible changes I saw from leadership’s ability to answer hard questions and put money towards policies and initiatives that really matter. I can only speak for myself though. I don’t pretend to understand the decision to retain Gelb but it honestly doesn’t affect my day to day.
It's more that the reason I resort to fart jokes is that I genuinely don't understand if any of the things in the article does anything.
I see a lot of stuff but I can't visualize how it improves anything, like what does making a "Riot Noir" actually accomplish? OK, a group got made. What did it prevent or create? It might be understandable to people familiar with the process and the direction it's all going in is very real and clear. But to people outside the process it's pretty alien.
But someone farting on someone else vs NOT farting on someone is a visceral, easy image that everyone is familiar with, which is incidentally why it also makes for an easy joke.
That’s fair about not understanding the impact the work going on inside. When all the reactions are jokes tho, it really puts a damper on real efforts.
As someone on the inside, and helped create one of those groups, it’s a grassroots effort from within the company for people to talk about inclusivity and how to best support folks in a particular identity space. We’re not doing it to look good to folks on the outside and frankly what jokes people make about it isn’t going to stop us from doing this work. It’s not like Riot is special in this either, plenty of other orgs and companies have resource groups based on identity, they’re more commonly referred to as ERGs.
Usually ERGs are self-organized. It's possible a Latinx one is in the works or simply hasn't been organized yet.
That's right TenTypesofBread (hi again!) the ERGs are self-organized, and they're new...
Agreed. It's a little late.
But better late than never.
If we don't fix our image, it's going to become really f**king hard to hire the best people in the industry. And that'd be a damn shame, because this is actually an incredible place to work with a lot of potential to become even better.
I wanted to work at Riot games, and not to pat myself on the back I think I'd be able to add value. Now I don't ¯\(ツ)/¯
Well... it's our loss. One thing to consider is whether you might not get a better perspective actually interviewing and talking with the people you'd be working with and making the call from that. It doesn't cost you that much to validate it more tangibly.
Read moreI think it’ll be interesting for other Rioters to see which issues are still bothering players the most. So if you comment below, just know that I see ya.
Alright then.
Your COO who was one of the most frequently called out people in this whole situation is still employed and there is no indication of anything special done in regards to changing his behavior as a powerful and visible person aside from 2 months off. He would have been fired in almost any other position or almost any other company. Way to go with "leadership accountability."
You got accused of lying to investigators and withholding information. After promising transparency that's a pretty big slap in the face.
You still have the forced arbitration. I get that it's a good business move but it's a terrible look, especially considering that...
Your employees staged a very visible walkout about it like a few months ago.
...
Gonna try, but this isn't the most friendly thread. Wish me luck, I'm trying my best here.
1) I don't know any of the details with Scott Gelb's investigation, but I do know Seyfarth Shaw investigated it and that we've seen action from the company leadership to provide consequences at all levels... it's hard for me to believe this was an open and shut case--there are facts that need to be considered and I don't have them and I work for Riot. How do you know with confidence?
2) Regarding the DFEH's press release that we withheld information, we refute that claim: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/riot-games-refutes-dfeh for what it's worth I don't think they accused us of lying ei...
Read moreHi. I'm here for context and updates.
When we wrote the rulebook at the start of the season, we knew that we weren't going to play a Spring 3/4 match and had not locked in Detroit (and were considering not playing 3/4 in Detroit). We decided to play the match and locked in Detroit, we knew the rulebook had to be updated to reflect Championship Point values for the third/fourth place match (otherwise, if both the winning and losing teams received the same CP, why play the match?). With the very tight turnaround for our team between MSI and Summer (with a lot of our folks supporting the College Championship), we just missed it.
As we started looking at our own projections for Worlds/Regional Qualifier, we realized we hadn't updated the rulebook. With half our team out yesterday (they work Sat/Sun so are not in the office), I did some rough modeling and made the CP change believing I had it right, updated the rulebook and sent it out. The change though created a few ...
Read moreWe're still invested in making Clash work! As others have said, we're in the process of running regional tests—TR recently ran theirs and LATAM's up next. We're keeping quiet during the testing process until we know things are in a good enough state to announce a new global beta. Until then, we actually really don't want to hype Clash since it just opens the door to potentially letting everyone down again if something else goes wrong :X
It's more that the reason I resort to fart jokes is that I genuinely don't understand if any of the things in the article does anything.
I see a lot of stuff but I can't visualize how it improves anything, like what does making a "Riot Noir" actually accomplish? OK, a group got made. What did it prevent or create? It might be understandable to people familiar with the process and the direction it's all going in is very real and clear. But to people outside the process it's pretty alien.
But someone farting on someone else vs NOT farting on someone is a visceral, easy image that everyone is familiar with, which is incidentally why it also makes for an easy joke.
oh yeah nw, wasn't meaning to direct any negativity toward you. and tbh i get it
re this part:
like what does making a "Riot Noir" actually accomplish?
that's just one small thing in a way longer article. But like I said in the other comment I linked to above, I get why people are skeptical.
Listen.
OK.
I don't 100% get it.
But have they stopped farting in people's faces.
That's all I really need to know.
Rioter here in a Reddit thread about sexism and harassment issues at Riot Games.
Three things:
1) pray for me
2) Honestly we don't know how to respond to this man. Working at Riot now—you hear this joke constantly, in-game and everywhere else. Nobody at Riot is walking around farting on anybody. We've spent the last year dealing with some pretty serious issues. For the whole thing to come down to a big fart joke is... sigh
3) The only other thing I really want to say in this Reddit thread I said in this comment.
They did a bunch of stuff to increase diversity within the company, but I can't see anything that addresses the existing rampant sexism that was reported and raised the issue. Pretty sure that the people treating their colleagues horribly are already aware of the effects of their behaviour so awareness training won't change much on this front. It is great how transparent Riot is about their steps to change the work environment but some of the glaring issues are not even addressed or acknowledge here.
Honestly, the skepticism is fair. My personal take: The problems that emerged over the last year are very real, and we've earned the reputation we have now.
I could tell you here that a lot of the steps Angela posted about have made a huge difference for Riot's culture and how people are being treated (and I do believe that). But if we're being realistic, I think the narrative about Riot isn't going to magically become "hey actually everyone Riot is getting better." Not for a long, long time, even if Riot actually is getting better. It just doesn't work that way. You don't get a redemption narrative for free when there actually were problems for years, and when there's still more work to be done.
The only way for Riot to claw its way out of its PR nightmare is to work—probably for years—to become not just "better," but literally industry-leading in terms of dealing with discrimination, harassment, and other bullsh*t that leads to an unhealthy work culture. ...
Read moreCan we get a new champ release schedule? (no reworks)
august>stashu(was certainlyT)>axes. Correct?
correct
You're the best man, thanks. Hope you have a great week.
Thanks! You too :)
One person making one sad comment does not count as a response.
I hear you didn't like my post... Sorry, it's actually hard to write about the topic. What would count as a response for you?
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