Riot Games, founded in 2006, has become one of the biggest companies in gaming on the back of its sole release, League of Legends, which had 100 million monthly players in 2016. With 2,500 employees across 20 offices, Riot is a powerhouse. In 2013, Riot was named one of Business Insider’s 25 best tech companies to work for. Two years later, it made $1.6 billion in revenue. Its Los Angeles campus is cushy in the way you’d expect a money-bloated tech company’s offices to be. It’s got a gym, a coffee shop, a cafeteria with free food, a LAN cafe. Employees often stay late to grind out competitive skill points in League of Legends with their Riot family and are communicating on Slack well into the night. Women who don’t fit in with Riot’s “bro culture”- a term I heard from over a half dozen sources while reporting this story – say these amenities help make the job bearable for only so long.
Over the course of several months, Kotaku has spoken to 28 current and former Riot employees, many of whom came forward with stories that echo Lacy’s. Some of those employees spoke on the record; most spoke anonymously because they feared for their future careers in the games industry or they were concerned that League of Legends’ passionate fanbase would retaliate against them for speaking out. Many of those sources painted a picture of Riot as a place where women are treated unfairly, where the company’s culture puts female employees at a disadvantage. Other current employees, speaking on the record, disputed that account, with some top female employees telling Kotaku they had not personally experienced gender discrimination at Riot.
A very detailed and well-researched article, with ample room for both sides of the story. It covers the experiences of both women and men with regards to harrassing behaviour, but also relays the experiences of people who never felt any sense of harrasment, while also allowing senior leadership and the company itself to properly respond to the claims made.
To go along with this story, there’s the experiences written down by former Riot employee Meagen Marie, which are quite chilling. This retelling is obviously of a lot more personal nature, but it does seem to align with Riot having a deeply sexist culture.
But, I just pretty much assume a lot of places are terrible to work at. I mean my job is great, but I’m not a member of a class that would be discriminated against. I have no idea what it would be like if I were a different race/gender/orientation, but I’ve always made an effort to make people feel comfortable.
A toxic bro-man-boy culture is what drove me away from that game. They tried for a while to pretend to do something about it, but have largely removed everything that looks like an attempt to curtail that unaccountable masculinity thing they have going on in the community. Some truly awful people play that game.
Question…do you complain about “Toxic femininity” in games focused on and catering to women? Because the way I see it many are more than happy to support a free market…as long as you only sell products that cater to their political and social narrative, the second that you don’t? Then suddenly its “toxic” and needs to be dealt with.
Here let me give you an example…remember when feminists were screaming about the lack of female avatars in games and how they “didn’t want to ban games, they just wanted to be included”? Yeah took me less than 3 minutes to have a group of feminists calling for a style of game to be banned, imagine that, because what they REALLY wanted was games that cater to their narrative NOT simply to be equally represented and it took me less than 3 minutes to point that out with a simple example and here is the example that caused feminists to lose their collective sh*t..
“There are plenty of games out there that are designed to be OTT and score the player based on how outrageous the player is in game. You SAY that you “only want equality not censorship” in games? Fine then lets add females to a game like Bulletstorm where you get achievements like “Grapenuts” for shooting a guy in the balls, we’ll just add achievements like “boob job” for blowing a female’s breasts off or “sex change” for crotch shots, after all fair is fair and you DO want equality, right?”
Needless to say in less than 3 minutes they were not only calling to ban ALL OTT games but some were even calling for the banning of head shots as allowing those against women would be unacceptable…yup, someone push the Staples “that was easy” button, my work was done.
Moral of the story if you do not like a product DO NOT BUY IT and let the PEOPLE decide what THEY want to support, my wife loves Match three and find the object games, which I find to be “games” in about as much as “52 card pickup” is a game…would I call those games “toxic”? Nope I simply do not buy them and let the market decide whether they succeed or fail. If there is a market for a feminist LoL I’m sure someone will make it and make a crapton of money…but I’m guessing without ever playing LoL that like most “Bruh” games I’ve come across its crass and crude and something jocks like to play while drinking beer and farting loudly and ya know what? That is fine and I hope it makes them happy but I’m not someone who sh*ts on others for not liking what I like, I simply do not buy those games.
Free choice and voting with your wallet in a free market…its a good thing. BTW nobody is holding a gun to their head and forcing them to work at “Dudebro .inc” last I checked, they are free to offer their labor someplace else.
Isn’t it funny how many are always for group dynamics and collective workspaces as long as it fits their narrative or doesn’t offend a protected class? I wonder if anybody would give a sh*t if it was a white person complaining about a “toxic black culture” at a black owned and operated company? Or a man complaining about a company run by women with a hard feminist slant? My guess is not.
Dude, calm down. You seem a a bit overly upset about video games. I’s just video games, right?
Which is not even the topic here.
My guess is that you seem to be a bit threatened by women and minorities.
Edited 2018-08-10 03:58 UTC
I actually…shock gasp…believe in a free market and that companies should be run the way the owners want it run…OMG free choice! What a concept! How dare I not be in support of a communist utopia where we are all interchangeable plastic dolls with zero differences!
If I build a company and I want everyone to dress in Borat mankinis and give prizes for who can let the eggiest fart and I can make a successful business? Well good on me, shouldn’t be anybody’s busines and you are free to go somewhere else if you don’t look nice in a mankini aren’t you? Same as I have NO problem with a black business that would want to hire only black people or the NYT hiring the most racist Korean they could possibly find, if they want the most racist Korean? Its their company, let them hire all the racist Koreans that they want and I am free to decide whether or not I want to buy from a company that supports racists or not.
Again a free market and voting with your wallet…what a concept! As long as companies aren’t colluding to hire or not hire specific groups it should be nobody’s business who they hire and let the CUSTOMERS decide if that is a company they want to support…but God fricking forbid you actually let the peasants have a say, why they might not support your narrative! Can’t have that now can we?
Again funny how many say they support freedom of choice, free will, and a free market…as long as everybody just does what they want them to do and nobody dares goes against the narrative. Not much actual freedom in your “freedumb” is there? If the government can tell me who to hire and how everyone is supposed to act what is to keep them from telling me that I HAVE to hire this or that person because they fit the narrative the government supports this week? whats to keep them from telling me I CANNOT fire a racist working at my company because “hey they aren’t the right kind of racist”?
We are having a serious battle with issues like this in the USA right now, with some trying to label ACTUAL FACTS as “hate speech” and to use that to silence people and even imprison them. We had a former head of the DNC stand on stage in front of thousands and declare “my job is to tell white people to shut up and sit down” and we just saw yesterday a black woman get a one day ban from Twitter (one of the big three de facto monopolies of social media, along with FB and Google) for “hate speech” for simply taking the racist Korean’s tweets and changing the word white to black.
So yeah excuse the hell out of me when I have an issue with this whole “toxic” BS, because we are quickly seeing where that leads, with unelected groups and NGOs telling private owners what is allowed and what isn’t and you better toe the narrative, else you be “toxic” and we’ll have to shut you down and silence you…yeah excuse the f*ck out of me if I don’t find a world like that unappealing, especially since we have seen time and time again that simply letting the public decide what they want to support and what they do not WORKS and works well.
Why would you have a problem with this? The company is just being run in the way they want. That’s how it should be, right? Don’t you support the freedom for companies to do whatever they want?
Edited 2018-08-12 09:18 UTC
I read a serious article by a psychologist last year which suggested that a major cause of tech sector bro culture is not as complex as some make it.
It’s just children, not sufficiently developed in character and experience, getting their hands on far too much money and power.
What would a bratty 8yr old boy create as his very own company – free food, loads of games, pizza and beer, and you can guess how 8yr old boys treat girls…
Myself, I resisted the simplicity of this analysis .. but it feels annoyingly correct.
It sounds correct. Not malice, just immaturity, failure to consider the wider consequences of actions, acting however gives you quick emotional satisfaction at the time.
You know, the book Microserfs had something vaguely similar. It was more innocent, but basically the author pointed out that the culture of Microsoft seemed based around keeping programmers in a kinda immature state. In his case it was more stuff like nerf guns, but it does raise questions about what maturity actually is, what causes people to mature, and why different people mature at different rates.
Myself, even at a young age I was pretty mature in some respects, but I still had a LOT to learn in others.
Any feminists reading this article decided to help solve the problem of underrepresentation of women in computer programming jobs by enrolling into a gender studies course in order to better study the effects that make this happen.
As long as the people willing to put the hours and perseverance that computer programming and computer science courses require are mostly men, we are going to have “bro culture”. These “bros” won’t magically change their ways because someone wrote an article, and most people need software, so these “bros” won’t go bankrupt anytime soon.
Edited 2018-08-09 23:41 UTC
Oh cry me a river about how hard it is to learn programming and working in IT.
It is a ton of fun, actually. The ‘bros’ are not making a sacrifice by working on games.
More often then not it is not the substance of the job but its social context that puts off women from studying computer science and working in IT. The “bro culture” is only a part of it, but saying that it is fine as is because “programming appears to be only for tough guys” won’t exactly help, will it?
And I am sorry to burst your bubble, but the stark gender inequality in IT existed long before gender studies were a thing.
Edited 2018-08-12 11:32 UTC
Now I know some people will respond to this by saying that modern culture frightens women away from the field. Sorry folks, modern culture heavily incentivises women to study computer science, and any female graduate with a CS degree is either readily employed or unemployed by choice because a female CS employee makes any tech company’s diversity stats look better. A simpler explanation is that women (or modern women) don’t want to put in the perseverance and mental wear that computer programming requires and instead prefer to study fields which require lots of memorization and repetition (women are very good at this) or fields that involve writing essays where everyone can be right at the same time and everyone can feel warm and fuzzy.
You don’t interact with women on a daily basis, do you?
What utterly sexist drivel, completely out of touch with any semblance of reality. I feel sad for you.
I have been a computer programmer for 25 years and I think I can say with reasonable certainty that the vast majority of computer programming jobs consist of about 95% memorization and repetition.
Everyone thinks its all about creativity and ingenuity. Sure, there is a bit of that at first as you repeatedly “invent” clever solutions to problems, until you slowly realize somebody already did what you did a hundred times over and you just hadn’t learned of it yet. That 5% of the time when you actually do something clever or unique makes it worth it to me, but mostly I’m just refining my ability to do the same things I did 20 years ago, just in new languages or in a more disciplined fashion. That is the job, constant learning and discipline, definitely things I think everyone can agree is not biased towards either sex (or anything else really).
As for perseverance and mental wear, in my experience women handle that at least as well if not better than men. Its just that most of them do it quietly without whining about it all the time, or worse flaunting it as if putting 80 hours of work in a week is somehow honorable and not stupid and self destructive (which is what it actually is)…
By the way, this is coming from someone who is sick to death of hearing all the moaning from the SJW crowd about whatever-ism in video games. I largely adhere to the philosophy that the industry would be better if games were more diverse in their target demographics instead of watered down to be palatable by all demographics… Games largely targeting men and boys are not the problem, its more of a lack of games targeting other groups. There are some, and they have been largely successful, so there is hope – but eventually if the current outrage-about-f*cking-everything culture keeps going, the pendulum will just keep swinging back and forth and it will never end – everyone pissed about everything their sex, race, tribe, or whatever doesn’t like. If you don’t like a game don’t buy it – I have never understood the problem with that approach.
You don’t see all this outrage about the clothing industry, because generally speaking men and women have different taste in clothes (duh), and somehow no one is offended by that. Why is that? Maybe its because both sexes are largely having their individual tastes serviced in a fairly equal fashion. And if your a guy that likes women’s clothes (or vise versa) guess what, your covered too! Everyone is happy, I really just don’t see the problem… Lets all complain about it until everyone is bullied into making clothes for everyone so that it doesn’t fit anyone well anymore! How is that a solution???
Anyway, back to the point. Just because I think the above doesn’t mean I’m sexist or anything-ist – I’m just tired of all the manufactured drama. I actually consider my female peers to be at least as capable as me or any other man (and yes, even at coming up with the clever and ingenious solutions that we seldom get to relish in). Most female programmers I know are really good at their job. If you think they are somehow ill equipped for it your an idiot.
Edited 2018-08-10 06:45 UTC
Have you ever bought clothes? Modern clothes literally do not fit anyone well. We’re already here. They’re all cut for this mythical body shape that only appears on TV and photoshopped images. Even the fact that I, as a really average sized man, can’t find clothes that fit me, is due to bad and unrealistic and inconsistent sizing that starts out being foisted on womens clothing, and because it is normalized by half the population, then gets foisted onto mens clothing. Even the most man-centric man incapable and unwilling to seeing things from someone else’s perspective should at least realize it all comes back to affect them, whether it is clothing, etc.
Funny how free marketeers are actually against the freedom of people to complain to try and get businesses to cater to real people.
I’m perfectly fine with people complaining to try and get businesses to cater to them, what I’m not fine abut is people complaining to try and get businesses to stop catering to others.
First off:
Kotaku runs a hit piece on Riot just as Univision wants to sell Kotaku.
It just stinks of a publicity stunt to get Kotaku back in the public mind.
Second:
There are 3 fundamental problems with this gender/diversity-stuff.
On the one hand women are more risk-averse than men, which results in them starting fewer businesses, or applying for a job at a newly founded company.
Because of this the tone in such companies is set by risk-taking adrenalin loaded men.
On the other hand women always feel disadvantaged.
It’s part of their nature and you can see this attitude in many places. (e.g. gender wage gap)
And many times they then try to frame it as sexism. (And yes, I have witnessed this behaviour myself)
Add to that the fact that women are less likely to work long hours, or to work in a high-tech field at all, and you have the perfect sexism shit storm.
2 videos on the differences between men and women I’d recommend are “Equal Contribution” from colttaine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Yn3i-DMKw
and a classic: “The gender equality paradox” by Harald Eia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE
This is a truly amazingly stupid statement.
For example everything regarding gender dimorphism.
Edited 2018-08-12 09:49 UTC
Another one who clearly doesn’t interact with women, ever.
I feel so sad for you.
Approximately 3/4 of psychology students are women.
I’d guess Peterson is interacting with them very frequently.
It’s not worth it.
Pointing out the psychological differences between men and women will just get you labelled a hate-monger. Nevermind the preponderance of evidence. You saw what happened to James Damore.
Edited 2018-08-14 15:17 UTC
I’m well aware of that, but there is still hope:
https://dailynewshungary.com/gender-studies-to-be-banned-in-hungary/
Peterson is not a biologist though so he’s out of his field here and many actual biologists does not agree with his position.