MrTibbs
2018
My amazing friend left Riot because of the awful company culture. She had a deeply unpleasant experience with the “bro” culture, including frequent masturbation jokes and other nasty little comments.
MrTibbs
2019
IGN’s released a statement about the Dead Cells review plagiarism. Filip’s out.
Edit: Jason Schreier suggests this wasn’t just a once-off mistake for the reviewer.
LMN8R
2020
It’s just so fucking gross. And even outside of the grossness factor, I honestly cannot comprehend how anything gets done in a culture like that.
It’s such a waste. A waste of people, a waste of money, a waste of time. The industry needs to stop tolerating all of this bullshit. Enough with the “training” and second chances. These misogynist assholes need to get fucking fired, yesterday.
Is it misogynist if it’s demeaning to both sexes?
Genuine question.
I’m half way through the article.
Farting on my face would get you knocked out.
Edit: Reading more, I’m confused.
Riot’s position is that they want hard core gamers, of their product preferably.
Article says only 10% of moba and 7% of fps gamers are female.
So then logic is that if you’re looking for a hardcore moba gamer and you interview and hire 10, then only 1 of those is likely to be a female, unless you deliberately look for female gamers one supposes.
Following on from that, if your company isn90% male, is it at all surprising that the rough edges are pronounced.
But the accusation against riot is saying that this representativeness is merely an excuse to perpetrate misogyny.
Am I understanding the article correctly?
Edit : nearly at the end of the article.
It’s well written. Seems to me a bunch of geeks got jobs in a geeky area and are being hostile to outsiders, with a strong under current of not knowing how to relate to women?
Is this a new story? Change geek and geeky for tech and techie or what have you.
Agreed. I also am surprised that nobody when asked to wear the “hazing caps” didnt just tell them to fuck right off, I daresay the majority of game developers I know would never have stood for either of the above, male or female. It really does sound not just like an offensive culture but frankly pathetically juvenile. That kind of shit only can happen if its encouraged from he top imho.
OK I finished the article.
I think by Riot’s standards I am not a gamer!
I can’t help but think that most companies have a bias and none are really meritocratic.
Who you know and not what, personal skills etc.
But riot sounds remarkably tone deaf / colour blind.
How one perpetrates such a culture in the era of #metoo is baffling.
I mean, all politics aside, it’s just plain common sense to not paint a target on yourself.
This attitude is kind of the problem (not calling you out, as I think your comment is representative of a general line of thought). No matter what your corporate demographics are, nobody should be farting on anybody or touching other people’s genitalia, or sending unsolicited pictures of their own genitalia.
The insane idea that these behaviors are inevitable when a group of men congregates is what people mean when they talk about toxic masculinity.
I don’t know about your work experience history, but the things described in that article aren’t “rough edges” or just “tone deaf”, they’re insane. I’ve worked at a small, (counts…) all-male game company, and the bro-iest we got was Nerf gun fights.
Nerf guns are awesome.
I wasn’t condoning them.
I was being a little cynical perhaps, saying basically that in a large group of men I almost expect certain stupid behaviours.
That doesn’t make it correct.
I just raise an eyebrow (or I would if I physically could) when people get surprised that this stuff happens.
Yeah, I think we mostly agree, I was noting that something seriously broken about our society’s expectations of men in general when we we just expect that kind of thing. It’s disturbing, while also kind of condescending at the same time (oh, poor men, they can’t help it).
It’s not a comment on an individual’s views so much as a mirror of our society’s deeply fucked up views.
JonRowe
2027
That was an excellently written article. I didn’t really take away that the Riot games employee culture was horrid. Just that it was bad like every other young tech company. It does seem that they are taking steps in the right direction, by hiring a person to specifically address the diversity and culture issues, training interviewers, etc.
But it seems like it is yet another tech company that is a post-college frat-house. It is a shame that companies can still be like this in 2018. I sincerely hope that they do fix their culture problem.
Naw. Companies only get to be as divorced from reality like Riot is/was because of extremely sudden massive success due to the lightning in the bottle that was League of Legends. As a result, they had no management and professionalism because they were just a handful of immature brats who suddenly had hundreds of employees without having any idea how to effectively create and manage a company of that size.
JonRowe
2029
I don’t know it feels to me like every Silicon Valley startup company has this same problem.
Maybe in 1998, not now. Not if they have raised money from VCs.
JonRowe
2031
I think that everything I have read disagrees with that assumption. Especially about VC’s
I mean, i can get dozens more. This is very much an entire tech-wide industry issue. It is disappointing that a video game company can’t do better than its peers. Especially a company with so much money and popularity in the community.
mok
2032
Larger Corporate Environments do not have these issues…or when they do the ban hammer falls pretty fast and hard.
EDIT: I think smaller business this could be an issue as the owner’s personality comes into play.
You’re conflating two issues that overlap, but are not the same.
There’s a difference between issues of potential (and actual) discrimination (which can and does happen at even mature and otherwise professionally run companies) vs the overt sexual harassment and fraternity hazing atmosphere that can only exist when artificially created by non-professional business owners suddenly finding themselves running something huge that they never learned to manage (and didn’t earn in a traditional way, so they’re often immature and arrogant). Their early success reinforces terrible conduct, and they don’t have any of the skills or knowledge needed to effectively run a large organization, so they essentially run it like a rock star’s posse
Nesrie
2035
I think we’re giving these guys too much credit. Never learned to manage? These are adults. Even if you don’t know how to manage a company, you can act like an adult and not send pictures of a penis too anyone outside your intimate relations.
Sure, there are a lot of companies that struggle with certain things but this Riot approach wasn’t someone trying to hide anything or some widely known secret, it’s blatant and yes, horrid.
I’m not giving them any credit whatsoever. Everything about them that’s set out in that article is abhorrent.
I’m saying that they are not representative of VC-funded tech companies run by more mature, experienced entrepreneurs - which is not to say that even more mature companies don’t also have discrimination issues or examples of wretched behavior - but we’d be giving the Riot guys too much credit to lump them in with the general discrimination problems that a company like Facebook might be having. These guys are just awful clowns who have no business employing anyone, if that reporting is accurate.
Nesrie
2037
Okay, that’s fair, but it’s not even the managing or employing part that’s an issue. I mean… I am going out on a limb and say that most managers don’t have to tell their new hires not to send dick pictures via their company e-mail or to their co-workers. It’s a maturity thing.
