#...oh yeah did i mention there are rated e variants of this? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

drpepperhateblog · 6 years

Text

Riot Games Sexism: Source Collection

Article: Inside The Culture of Sexism at Riot Games

Some excerpts:

“Both male and female sources have described seeing unsolicited and unwelcome pictures of male genitalia from bosses or colleagues. One woman saw an e-mail thread about what it would be like to “penetrate her,” in which a colleague added that she’d be a good target to sleep with and not call again.”

“Another said a colleague once informed her, apparently as a compliment, that she was on a list getting passed around by senior leaders detailing who they’d sleep with.”

“One of Riot’s male senior leaders regularly grabbed his genitals, the source said, adding, “If he walked into a meeting with no women he’d just fart on someone’s face.””

In disbelief? Here are some witnesses, with both former and current employees confirming what’s happening:

Multiple tweets from MiniWhiteRabbit

“Multiple women confided in me about being sexually harassed at work. About their asses being slapped, being groped at parties, or being raped at Riot events.”

Riot Tiza tweet

“Tough to read this but this is dead on about some problems in our house.”

Xylese tweet

“I’m fortunate to have an incredibly supportive manager, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I have colleagues who’ve dealt w/ and still deal w/ this shit. I’ve had my own share of bad experiences here, too. I want that to change in Riot and in the industry.”

FFMirhi tweet

“I can assure you that the vast majority of testimonials in this article are true.”

Gogo Usagi tweet

“I worked there for 3 years and I'm still recovering, honestly.”

ScarizardPlays tweet

“I wanted to mostly be quiet and let other people speak but if my voice helps lend any credibility to the _staggering_ amount of sources cited here: this isn’t overblown ‘sensationalist kotaku garbage’ or whatever redditors love to say. Even the bits you can’t believe? it happened”

Yonah tweet

“I was so idealistic & hopeful when I joined Riot. I really believed the hype. And I left so broken I’ve been in therapy for years.”

Devongiehl tweet

“Happy to see all of this finally brought to light. I left three years ago, but Riot still has has a long way to go.”

DanielZKlein comment

“Sorry to state the obvious, but none of this is fucking acceptable. These people should at the very least have been put on a personal improvement plan or be fired. This is infuriating.”

UPDATE: Daniel Z Klein has further confirmed that the information in the article is true (link to multiple tweets), also confirmed what happened to Yonah (link), and made several retweets such as this:

“Not every single woman at a company has to have experience harassment for it to be real. The Kotaku piece was a result of months of thorough investigative journalism.”

In addition, there were questions raised about whether the person in the article could really have 16 game consoles plugged in. Here is proof that it’s true.

UPDATE 2: Riot Ghostcrawler comment on the controversy:

“One of the challenges of situations like this is that plenty of people have been fired for things that were described in the article. I have personally fired people for it (and I did it at Blizzard too). But you don't often go around communicating that fact, often times because you are trying to protect the victim of the harassment.

That is definitely not to say we have addressed every problem mentioned in the article.”

Not a current or former Rioter, but e-sports journalist Richard Lewis had something to say (tweet) about the article:

“Remember how I told you 2 years ago there was an inherent issue with sexism at Riot Games and we'd need to wait for the NDAs to start dropping off before the truth come out? Looks like today might be the day.”

Meagan-Marie tumblr post

Some excerpts:

“Soon I began to notice gendered language regularly being used among male Rioters to insult each other. Guys would tell each other “not to be such a girl” and call one another “p*ssies” quite regularly. They would casually refer to women as “b*tches” and say that “all women were crazy.” I also overheard a group discussing how a female professional made it far in the industry, suggesting she “sucked c*ck to get to the top.”

“I didn’t go out with colleagues after events because strip clubs seemed to be a common destination. Asking me what age I lost my virginity at was deemed appropriate conversation during a team dinner, and employees I didn’t know prodded into how my sex life worked in a long-distance relationship.”

“Rape became a punchline to jokes quite frequently, including one instance where an employee went on for several hours about how he was going to rape his male colleague, who was his hotel roommate. He was graphic in exactly how he was going to rape his roommate, who was a new hire, and it was obvious that the individual in question was extremely uncomfortable.”

“A senior staff member proceeded to repeatedly call me sexist for not being willing to room with a man I’d never met before. At first, I thought he was kidding, but he continued to make arguments to his point. I explained why I would be more comfortable sharing a room with another woman, and told him I wasn’t enjoying the conversation and would leave if I was continued to be called sexist. The conversation continued, with him eventually saying that my unwillingness to room with a man was the same as not hiring a woman due to her gender.”

“I regularly witnessed lewd comments about women passing by at events, discussing their level of attractiveness, whether someone would sleep with them, and guessing if they were the age of consent.”

“At least three times Riot Dublin employees made inappropriate comments via work email about a female cosplayer’s breasts (one they regularly worked with).”

“Cosplayers have also been called “tr*nnies” and “attention whores” by Riot employees at events.”

“In meetings, I was told that we shouldn’t put cosplayers on stage to play League live, because they are mostly women, and therefore not very good at the game.”

If there was any doubt of the validity of these stories, this tweet from Riot Games themselves washed them away:

UPDATE 3: Katie De Sousa tumblr post

“Not too long after I started at Riot, the topic of sexual harassment came up in a conversation among a few Rioters on the art team, I was there, just listening. They were talking about something that had happened to a woman there, and I had no context for it, but was surprised when one of the guys on the team claimed that “she liked the attention”. The subject was then laughed off. I later found out what actually happened, a female employee received super inappropriate texts from a lead. This group of dudebros laughed it off and made her the villain.”

“I also can’t help but think I would have felt more empowered if I wasn’t told by a male coworker that “Women don’t fit into a male hierarchy.” Maybe I would have been more inclined to strive for greatness if I wasn’t dismissively called a “pretty pretty princess” when my first champion, Jinx, did so well (among a bunch of other thinly veiled jealous verbal barbs). I actually went to a lead to express my frustration over this and he said “Yeah I can see why he’s acting like that, I mean I’m kind of jealous too.” What was that about women speaking up again?”

“Not too long into my career one of my male coworkers might have thought he was giving me a compliment when he decided to tell me about how great some of the guys thought my breasts were. I had made the foolish mistake of going to a Riot pool party, wearing a swimsuit, and swimming. I hope I don’t have to explain how violating that felt, at any rate I learned my lesson, and I never attended another.”

“My days might have been a bit easier to manage if I didn’t have to stifle my rage when a male coworker would explain to me how to make designs for women, and how to be a feminist. Realizing that they believe their opinion as a dude meant more than, I don’t know, my entire lifetime of experience as a woman?”

“Even the Riot Dames email group didn’t feel like a safe space, when we were discussing the lack of female characters in esports promos a senior lead decided to chime in and question whether women deserved to be represented, they haven’t really earned it yet, as pro LoL players were all male. Oh, and on the topic of men thinking women are inherently lesser and must prove otherwise, let’s discuss another gross habit: saying “you’re really good at _______ for a chick.””

UPDATE 4: Barry Hawkins blog post

“The sexual references by straight men directly towards other straight men were a more complicated issue. It would often be homosexual in nature, but could also be sexually aggressive toward your significant other. You might be talking to a leader about conflict with a peer, and they’d respond with “man, you’re acting like he had sex with your wife.” Or they might start a paragraph by saying “Now for instance, if I fucked your wife…” and then segue into what they were actually supposed to be saying. The homosexual variants would be things like “well if he sucked your dick, would you feel better about this?” or “it’s not like I’m asking you to suck my dick, but I’d be OK with it if you did.””

“The next day, one of my former direct reports and her direct report, both of whom I was actively mentoring, asked to speak with me as soon as I could. We met up right away, and they were visibly upset. One of them said to me, “There’s a rape joke in some of the recruiting material, and they’re saying it’s something that Brandon said at the offsite. Is that true? Did he say that?” I think I took a deep breath, followed by a long sigh. It was a simple question, with a simple answer, but with that answer came grave implications.“Yeah, he did.””

“I will never forget changing planes in San Francisco the following Monday. I pulled out my phone to check email, and found replies to the email I sent Brandon, but not only him. My original email had apparently become a thread with some folks in leadership. I recall it mentioning that hyper-sensitive people who didn’t understand intent were a problem we needed to address at Riot. I closed that email thread, and immediately below it there was a meeting invite titled “Riot Voice and Sense of Humor” set for when everyone returned from the company trip. The invite included the co-founders Marc (my boss) and Brandon, the head of Communications, the head of Legal, and myself.”

“The head of Legal did speak up and asked if we were concerned about legal liability. She was seated to my left, and I was seated on Brandon’s left, where he was at the head of table. Brandon extended his arm past me and held up his hand in front of her and hushed her, saying we were not going to talk about that.”

UPDATE 5: Riot Games Apology Statement: Our First Steps Forward

#riot games #league of legends #sexism #misogyny

53 notes · View notes