Flat out rape? Thats criminal. This company has a lot to answer for
Six Months At Riot Games by Meagan Marie (Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Rape Jokes)
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Flat out rape? Thats criminal. This company has a lot to answer for
Absolutely fucking disgusting shitfest of rancid discrimination and privilege which once again proves this country desperately needs to have a word with itself. Can only profusely apologise to Meagan Marie for having to endure such a vile experience here.
Is this the same Megan Marie who worked at Crystal dynamics around the time tomb raider 2013 was coming out? Wasn't she horrible harassed by men before, grabbing her butt.
Shits fucked up. Poor Megan
Shits fucked up. Poor Megan
What the fuck is wrong with people. Reading these accounts make me fume. It feels like toxic workplaces are the norm in tech/gaming companies. It's like just because they have a foosball table and colorful wallpapers doesnt change the fact that these "cool" companies are run by assholes who give free reign to other assholes to keep up the status quo.
Here's my take on it as a Riot alumni.
The Riot creed is good. It has good intentions. Riot's core belief is "players first"; they believe that to fulfill this, they need to understand their users' experience--hence, be a gamer. But in a rapidly expanding company, there's a game of telephone between the people who write the guidelines and the people who live them. Not everyone will get it. Another one of their core guidelines is "be humble", but there's a lot of false humility there too. When I was still there, there was certainly a sense of invincibility and aversion to outside ideas and fresh thinking. Again, they parrot it, but they don't get it.
One of the things that Riot does well is keep their employees engaged and happy. There's a lot of nice perks and the pay is competitive with top Silicon Valley tech, presuming you're at least a mid-level developer. Part of being happy means there's a veil drawn over your eyes, so you don't necessarily see all the horrible shit that might be happening around you. It's a sprawling campus and you'll probably never even learn the names of everyone on your floor, or building. And the vast majority of people there are fucking awesome, cream of the crop in their disciplines, and just good people to boot. But that's just one part of it.
The other part of it is that there are people there who are seriously questionable, who everyone knows about, who leadership seems well-aware of. These people seem to run free of consequence, with years of horrific stories attached to their name. And they just keep. Causing. Problems. And on a day-to-day basis, as a male especially, you wouldn't know anything about it. But a female friend tells you a story, and you're shocked. Then you hear it from another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And it becomes normal.
The Riot creed is good. It has good intentions. Riot's core belief is "players first"; they believe that to fulfill this, they need to understand their users' experience--hence, be a gamer. But in a rapidly expanding company, there's a game of telephone between the people who write the guidelines and the people who live them. Not everyone will get it. Another one of their core guidelines is "be humble", but there's a lot of false humility there too. When I was still there, there was certainly a sense of invincibility and aversion to outside ideas and fresh thinking. Again, they parrot it, but they don't get it.
One of the things that Riot does well is keep their employees engaged and happy. There's a lot of nice perks and the pay is competitive with top Silicon Valley tech, presuming you're at least a mid-level developer. Part of being happy means there's a veil drawn over your eyes, so you don't necessarily see all the horrible shit that might be happening around you. It's a sprawling campus and you'll probably never even learn the names of everyone on your floor, or building. And the vast majority of people there are fucking awesome, cream of the crop in their disciplines, and just good people to boot. But that's just one part of it.
The other part of it is that there are people there who are seriously questionable, who everyone knows about, who leadership seems well-aware of. These people seem to run free of consequence, with years of horrific stories attached to their name. And they just keep. Causing. Problems. And on a day-to-day basis, as a male especially, you wouldn't know anything about it. But a female friend tells you a story, and you're shocked. Then you hear it from another one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And it becomes normal.
Yes, although given the subject of this thread it's important to note that she wasn't harassed at CD. What happened to her occurred at various conventions.
So let me get this straight...
These cream of the crop employees, these masters of their craft, these great people... they hear repeatedly, seemingly at the regular, all this heinous disgusting shit, and they choose to say nothing, do nothing, all because the benefits are cushy? You said yourself "everyone knows about" these gross problematic employees who get away with whatever they fucking want. But because this "becomes normal", they decide to not do anything?
I wouldn't classify these as "great people" by any definition. This sounds like toxicity run rampant simply because it's allowed to. Fuck that.
Not quite, no. Not when they have no control over the drama.
To quote a friend of mine:
"I'm really happy to see a lot of Rioters expressing that they feel like they've learned so much and that their eyes are open. But I gotta say: Jesus Christ my dudes, it's not like this stuff wasn't expressed to you before."
And that's it in a nutshell. You can see it happen around you, but you have no power to do anything about it. I reported some direct concerns to one of my managers while I was there and I didn't get any feedback over whether anything was done about it. Doubt so.
Wondering if we'll get a half-assed "we messed up; we need to do better" apology or none at all?
I do feel one thing employees frequently don't realize is that they have lots of power in aggregate.
If an entire design department or programming department or art department goes to their manager and demands change, that change is going to happen, because the company can't function without them.
This is a management and HR failure pretty much. Bad actors in the workplace will always happen so it comes down to the people in charge to make the right calls. It's clear that Riot management is incapable of making those calls or simply doesn't want to. And it very well could be because said management is potentially involved, or knows that by acknowledging the situation they will show that they fucked up by letting things go that far.
Nah, being called children gives them a potential out that they don't deserve. They're adults who are responsible for what they do.
Jesus Christ, that's actually worst than what was described on Kotaku. And it's on Ireland so quite widespread.
I'll say the same thing that I say every time that a developer is found with those problems: This is to show that developers are also human and individuals with different personalities and such so many times you'll see this shit. It's not the big bad publisher fucking them, they can fuck themselves alone in many aspects and treatment of employees is one of those. They're a company just like publishers, after all.
Naughty Dog is quite progressist in many aspects but at the same time it has an accusation of abuse. So no, I don't believe in correlation of games and treatment of employees.
I'll say the same thing that I say every time that a developer is found with those problems: This is to show that developers are also human and individuals with different personalities and such so many times you'll see this shit. It's not the big bad publisher fucking them, they can fuck themselves alone in many aspects and treatment of employees is one of those. They're a company just like publishers, after all.
Naughty Dog is quite progressist in many aspects but at the same time it has an accusation of abuse. So no, I don't believe in correlation of games and treatment of employees.
Naughty Dog's crunch culture is also infamous even in an industry filled with crunch culture so it's not like they're some shining city on the hill.
I'm pretty sure it is not just riot games. i'm studying videogames development and last year a group in the class was requested to do a presentation about women in videogames, and thank lord there was no women in the class to witness it because it was 15 min of sexualising, laughing at them and minimazing their role, importance and problems. It was beyond awful, and when i spoke out about it they just said it was a "joke". toxicity in gaming is pretty high and that includes the people who want to work making games.
Meagan. :( Glad Crystal Dynamics got her back in and she seems to have a much better experience there.
Also
FFS. I hope that guy was able to get a different roommate or just leave if not.
Also
FFS. I hope that guy was able to get a different roommate or just leave if not.
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I work in business software development which is very similiar to games and from a professional standpoint that jira comment was just weird. How can a team truly perform if such things are happening? It does not seem logical to me. I as a project manager/product owner/scrum master would never let a team behave that way.
I would also never let a co-worker talk to me or about me like that. That shit would have so much consequences.
Riot needs to step up and start managing the culture from the inside.
I would also never let a co-worker talk to me or about me like that. That shit would have so much consequences.
Riot needs to step up and start managing the culture from the inside.
You're both right. This is much worse.
Yeah.
This is why I stay away from a lot of gamer gatherings and competitive gaming groups/clans.
I joined a League of Legends club during my first few years of college and they were good guys, I think, but I felt strange knowing that some of the ones in the group were like this but hid it.
Ever since that, I've stopped playing League of Legends and I stopped joining groups like that and I don't fuck with clans.. at all.
Mind you, I'm likely going to be the only black guy in these groups, so that's an issue to get passed as well.
I remember when I first started playing League of Legends and a few months in, I was being told to kill myself. Not only that, but just lots of slurs, etc.
I don't know what's worse, the redneck mil-sim men on Battlefield 4 or the alt-right boys on League of Legends.
This is why I stay away from a lot of gamer gatherings and competitive gaming groups/clans.
I joined a League of Legends club during my first few years of college and they were good guys, I think, but I felt strange knowing that some of the ones in the group were like this but hid it.
Ever since that, I've stopped playing League of Legends and I stopped joining groups like that and I don't fuck with clans.. at all.
Mind you, I'm likely going to be the only black guy in these groups, so that's an issue to get passed as well.
I remember when I first started playing League of Legends and a few months in, I was being told to kill myself. Not only that, but just lots of slurs, etc.
I don't know what's worse, the redneck mil-sim men on Battlefield 4 or the alt-right boys on League of Legends.
I still play competitive League and it's best not to really get close with anybody in your clan social network because some of these people are absolute shitheads but are useful at being good at the game. You have to make compromises and keep some distance. As far as I know they're nothing like the people in the article but you just don't know.
Company culture is often a trickle down thing. The only reason a team lead would act like this is because their management allows/ignores it who are also allowed by their bosses and so on. The rot usually originates from people in leadership who would never give up their position over morality or toxic culture because they have too high of an opinion of themselves or are so fucking stupid that they don't even recognize what they're doing.
Definitely. One guy I added on my social media ended up stalking a friend of mine. She had just purchased an Xbox 360, they started talking and boom, he started getting creepy and wouldn't stop messaging her and told her he wanted to move in with her because he felt they had a "connection" or some shit.
Gamer culture has such a severe problem. I'm not even surprised that Meagan experienced this, as sexism and racism is pretty much in all male dominated workplaces.
Only other reason I can see is money talks. I can't generalize if they actually came out and denounced the stuff, but they won't so...
Plus I've seen it and see it in other avenues of life. I'm also not saying it's everyone but there's definitely people like that in the industry.
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I don't think it's an unfair generalization. Apathy was the main reaction, and prominiment gamergaters or people of the same mold have been rewarded every year at the game awards in December since they started.
You know, I've followed Meagan for a few years, ever since she posted about harassment from one of the gaming publications (think it was GameInformer). Remember her talking about this opportunity and thought it was a bit odd that she left after a short time...sad to hear it was because of this and that she continues to experience this awful behavior no matter which facet of the industry.
Not a fan of Riot before all this but, the entire industry needs a purge or something.
Meagan needs to be commended for going through this shit and still continues to work within the games industry, her and others in similar situations...that and above all else, needs to be given respect.
Not a fan of Riot before all this but, the entire industry needs a purge or something.
Meagan needs to be commended for going through this shit and still continues to work within the games industry, her and others in similar situations...that and above all else, needs to be given respect.
Gross as fuck. I hope this news spreads and gets more attention.
Where are the lawyers when you need them?
Where are the lawyers when you need them?
EA is supposedly one of the more forward-facing workplaces about having diverse and respectful culture so I can understand why that poster would not want people to generalize. That said, it's a shame EA decides to sabotage its own public facing image constantly so that the good things it does do get totally lost.
Wow, their response to the Kotaku article is empty as fuck. Seeing all of this coming to the surface and all you can say is "nothing happening here, keep moving"? Unfortunately, I doubt much will come from this, since most players don't care about the internal issues of a company, and employees don't have many rights.
Funny, though, how they are known as the having all these tools to try and reduce toxicity in their game, and take it very seriously. I guess not really.
Funny, though, how they are known as the having all these tools to try and reduce toxicity in their game, and take it very seriously. I guess not really.
EA absolutely didn't do shit for its employees who were harassed over the Andromeda garbage.
I'm only communicating what I've heard and read, not attempting to apologize for the Andromeda situation.
I'm communicating what I heard directly from people who were present during that situation.
I was actually wondering about her when the Kotaku article went up as I really liked her at Game Informer and was sad to see her leave. I knew she was at Crystal Dynamics now but I didn't realize she was only with Riot 6 months.
It's a hell of a read, and the things she and others have dealt with there are just mindblowing. God, I hate gamer culture.
It's a hell of a read, and the things she and others have dealt with there are just mindblowing. God, I hate gamer culture.
This sounds like the worst possible frat party gone wild. I'm pretty confident if someone farted in my fucking face, my body would involuntarily deck their nose into the back of their skull.
It goes without saying that this applies to like 95% of the other shit going on there...
EA is also a lot older than a lot of these companies and has a different culture.
What are they supposed to do? Isolate employees from the internet?
Apply some critical thinking.