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[Kotaku] Riot Games is now being investigated by the State of California for gender discrimination

MMarston

MMarston

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Currently a developing story. Riot themselves have not yet commented.
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing said today that it is filing an investigation enforcement suit against League of Legends publisher Riot Games, as part of an investigation into gender discrimination at the company.

The DFEH is asking the courts to compel Riot to provide employees' pay information for "an ongoing investigation into alleged gender discrimination," according to a press release issued on Wednesday afternoon by the department. It said that it is looking into "alleged unequal pay, sexual harassment, sexual assault, retaliation, and gender discrimination in selection and promotion."

While the investigation began in October 2018, the DFEH said that Riot has so far "refused to provide the Department with adequate information for DFEH to analyze whether women are paid less than men at the company," which is why it is now filing the suit. In the suit, the DFEH says that Riot has "impeded" the investigation by withholding "basic employment data that... employment laws require employers to maintain." The DFEH said it has met with Riot numerous times but has been unable to reach a solution without involving the courts.
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UPDATE: Riot has responded
We've been in active conversations with the DFEH since its inquiry began. Investigations like this can arise when there have been allegations of workplace disparity and we've been cooperating in good faith with the DFEH to address its concerns. During this time, we've promptly responded to the DFEH's requests, and have produced over 2,500 pages of documents and several thousand lines of pay data so far. We've also made several recent requests that the DFEH participate in a call with us to address their requests. To date, these requests have been unanswered, so we're frankly disappointed to see the DFEH issue a press release alleging that we've been non-cooperative. We're confident that we've made substantial progress on diversity, inclusion, and company culture, and look forward to continue demonstrating this to the DFEH.
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JDSN

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Oct 27, 2017
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Cheers to the new sites that broke the news at first, was it Kotaku?
 

Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
Having heard stories from a female friend who used to work at riot games, I'm glad this is happening. There's absolutely a frat mentality there.
 
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MMarston

MMarston

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JDSN said:
Cheers to the new sites that broke the news at first, was it Kotaku?
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Looks that way. It popped up on my news feed and nowhere else yet.

EDIT: Oh, I think you meant the original story from last year. Then yes, it was them too.
 
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LordGorchnik

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Oct 30, 2017
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For anyone familiar with CA state law will the results of their investigation be made for public knowledge?
 

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Good.
JDSN said:
Cheers to the new sites that broke the news at first, was it Kotaku?
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Pretty sure this was it

kotaku.com

Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games

Throughout her three years at Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends, Lacy made it her mission to hire a woman into a leadership role. Lacy had heard plenty of excuses for why her female job candidates weren’t Riot material. Some were “ladder climbers.” Others had “too much ego.” Most...
kotaku.com kotaku.com
 
Armaros

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Oct 25, 2017
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They 100% deserve this for refusing to address and solve these issues internally and instead decied to sweep them all under the rug.
 
Glass Arrows

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Riot's shitty sexist culture is not that surprising for a specific reason: they made it a point to heavily prioritize hiring people who played the game a lot, without filtering for other things that are just as if not more important. Given how sexist and toxic the playerbase can be, it's not surprising that hiring from that pool would result in this kind of environment.

The one anecdote that stuck out to me is one of the interview questions for job apps being how much they played League. Not a bad question in and of itself but where it got ridiculous was the expectation that you would play for absurd hours a day (like 10 or so), when that's neither viable nor responsible for anyone who isn't a pro player or streamer. Most people don't have that kind of time to play games. The whole place sounds like a toxic "gamerbro" environment even compared to other studios with bad corporate cultures.
 
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flare

flare

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Oct 25, 2017
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Completely deserved, the company's made multiple promises to improve things and they haven't done shit. No results.
 
Official_Danimalz

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Glass Arrows said:
Riot's shitty sexist culture is not that surprising for a specific reason: they made it a point to heavily prioritize hiring people who played the game a lot, without filtering for other things that are just as if not more important. Given how sexist and toxic the playerbase can be, it's not surprised that hiring from that pool would result in this kind of environment.

The one anecdote that stuck out to me is one of the interview questions for job apps being how much they played League. Not a bad question in and of itself but where it got ridiculous was the expectation that you would play for absurd hours (like 10 or so), when that's neither viable nor responsible for anyone who isn't a pro player or streamer. Most people don't have that kind of time to play games.
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This is exactly the issue: building a company of people who worship the product will necessarily create a fratty and abusive culture, especially if the product's fanbase is deeply and famously toxic.
 

Gatti-man

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Jan 31, 2018
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Glass Arrows said:
Riot's shitty sexist culture is not that surprising for a specific reason: they made it a point to heavily prioritize hiring people who played the game a lot, without filtering for other things that are just as if not more important. Given how sexist and toxic the playerbase can be, it's not surprising that hiring from that pool would result in this kind of environment.

The one anecdote that stuck out to me is one of the interview questions for job apps being how much they played League. Not a bad question in and of itself but where it got ridiculous was the expectation that you would play for absurd hours (like 10 or so), when that's neither viable nor responsible for anyone who isn't a pro player or streamer. Most people don't have that kind of time to play games. The whole place sounds like a toxic "gamerbro" environment even compared to other studios with bad corporate cultures.
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10 hours a week? Wow. What professional has that kind of time. Must be nice lol
 
lake

lake

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giphy.gif
 
Glass Arrows

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Hobbes said:
That's 20 games based on averages and even then that is roughly 8% of your entire week including 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of work (correct my math if wrong)

So I'm not sure why that's a shock... are people usually busier?
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I recall it being "10 hours a day" which is why I found it so absurd, but I admit I could be misremembering. I thought it was present in the original expose by Kotaku which already got posted, but I'm reading it over again now and can't find it, so I'm not sure where I heard it from now.
 
Saucycarpdog

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Riot responds.
We've been in active conversations with the DFEH since its inquiry began. Investigations like this can arise when there have been allegations of workplace disparity and we've been cooperating in good faith with the DFEH to address its concerns. During this time, we've promptly responded to the DFEH's requests, and have produced over 2,500 pages of documents and several thousand lines of pay data so far. We've also made several recent requests that the DFEH participate in a call with us to address their requests. To date, these requests have been unanswered, so we're frankly disappointed to see the DFEH issue a press release alleging that we've been non-cooperative. We're confident that we've made substantial progress on diversity, inclusion, and company culture, and look forward to continue demonstrating this to the DFEH.
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Deleted member 3208

Oct 25, 2017
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Riot shared a response to Kotaku:

We've been in active conversations with the DFEH since its inquiry began. Investigations like this can arise when there have been allegations of workplace disparity and we've been cooperating in good faith with the DFEH to address its concerns. During this time, we've promptly responded to the DFEH's requests, and have produced over 2,500 pages of documents and several thousand lines of pay data so far. We've also made several recent requests that the DFEH participate in a call with us to address their requests. To date, these requests have been unanswered, so we're frankly disappointed to see the DFEH issue a press release alleging that we've been non-cooperative. We're confident that we've made substantial progress on diversity, inclusion, and company culture, and look forward to continue demonstrating this to the DFEH.
Click to expand...
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Glass Arrows said:
I recall it being "10 hours a day" which is why I found it so absurd, but I admit I could be misremembering. I thought it was present in the original expose by Kotaku which already got posted, but I'm reading it over again now and can't find it, so I'm not sure where I heard it from now.
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It is probably an anecdote from QA at Riot. I have heard some wild shit from that department in the early days but I'd have to ask around for current work hours most people do.
 

Deleted member 50374

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We've also made several recent requests that the DFEH participate in a call with us to address their requests. To date, these requests have been unanswered, so we're frankly disappointed to see the DFEH issue a press release alleging that we've been non-cooperative.
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I'm calling bullshit on this - no way Riot did this and produced satisfactory documents
 
Poised Turtoise

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everything about this company just irrittates the piss out of me, from their weird self deprecating stick figure youtube commercials to their oh yeah apparently super blatant and infantile culture of sexism get bodied RIOT
 
Nome

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Glass Arrows said:
Riot's shitty sexist culture is not that surprising for a specific reason: they made it a point to heavily prioritize hiring people who played the game a lot, without filtering for other things that are just as if not more important. Given how sexist and toxic the playerbase can be, it's not surprising that hiring from that pool would result in this kind of environment.

The one anecdote that stuck out to me is one of the interview questions for job apps being how much they played League. Not a bad question in and of itself but where it got ridiculous was the expectation that you would play for absurd hours a day (like 10 or so), when that's neither viable nor responsible for anyone who isn't a pro player or streamer. Most people don't have that kind of time to play games. The whole place sounds like a toxic "gamerbro" environment even compared to other studios with bad corporate cultures.
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Unless they've changed their policies in recent years, this seems like an exaggeration.
Being familiar with their product is obviously a plus, but when I was there, you were never expected to have played the game prior to being hired, and never expected to play the game after being hired. There were optional programs to teach you the game if you wanted to learn. There were plenty of game designers and engineers who basically never touched League of Legends, or had the proficiency and game knowledge of a low Bronze player.
 

LudicrousSpeed

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Nome said:
Unless they've changed their policies in recent years, this seems like an exaggeration.
Being familiar with their product is obviously a plus, but when I was there, you were never expected to have played the game prior to being hired, and never expected to play the game after being hired. There were optional programs to teach you the game if you wanted to learn. There were plenty of game designers and engineers who basically never touched League of Legends, or had the proficiency and game knowledge of a low Bronze player.
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If you've got some good evidence to contribute, I'd love to hear it, but the reporting indicates otherwise. There's honestly too much of it to quote here, so my suggestion would be to go look at Cecila's earlier story about Riot (https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483) and start from the subheading "Gamers First".
 
Nome

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Hobbes said:
It is probably an anecdote from QA at Riot. I have heard some wild shit from that department in the early days but I'd have to ask around for current work hours most people do.
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QA were treated well at Riot when I was there (2011-2014). There's room for career growth as well as opportunity to transition to other departments if they wish. A lot of their current design team started as QA or playtesters with limited or no industry experience beforehand. All of the QA I worked with gushed about how much better Riot was compared to other developers they've worked with, so unless there's been a major culture shift in the past few years, I don't think this is a departmental issue. Riot also makes ample use of external QA vendors to lighten the load.
 
Nome

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LudicrousSpeed said:
If you've got some good evidence to contribute, I'd love to hear it, but the reporting indicates otherwise. There's honestly too much of it to quote here, so my suggestion would be to go look at Cecila's earlier story about Riot (https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483) and start from the subheading "Gamers First".
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I've read this article. I also know some of the referenced folks in the article, although most were hired after I'd left.
Riot has always had a "players first" directive as part of their culture, but it's always meant to be in promotion of user empathy. I'm not going to be able to disprove any particular anecdote, especially as Riot is a massive company and it's also evolved over the years, but I will say that the accusation of "players first" being a contributor to toxicity was absolutely not the case while I was there.
 
Nightwing123

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Oct 27, 2017
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Good to see this finally I've heard a lot of horror stories about Riot Games. Hopefully leads to actually change.
 
jeelybeans

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Hell yes, burn it down.

And screw some of my friends who work at Riot to refuse to acknowledge the shit going on in their company.
 
Arttemis

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Everything I've heard about the culture inside the company is utterly disgusting.

I hope they are dragged through the mud and churned out at the highest level, making way for an executive Exodus, be accompanied with criminal charges that stick.
 
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