Riot Games Issues New Company Values In Wake of 'Bro' Culture Accusations (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Riot Games, the maker of the enormously popular League of Legends multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) PC game, has issued a new set of company values on its web site. They're the result of some soul searching after the company was accused by many of its own employees last year of having a sexist "bro" culture. The company said that these new values replace the company's Manifesto from 2012 and reflects conversations with more than 1,700 Rioters about "what we want our company to be."

Comments

Wokness signaling

[sinij]

Wokeness signaling is not a no-loss proposition. Any gaming company has to realize that it also brings about:
a. Content censorship. Be prepared to run all your content decisions by an unaccountable "committee" that will issue arbitrary decisions. Unlike law and religion, these people are not sufficiently organized or organizationally mature to have a set of rules or standards to follow.
b. Departure from meritocracy in employment standards. One of the common demands is hiring higher number of minorities and women, while great as a principle without available qualified candidates the only way to meet targets is to hire unqualified candidates.
c. Gamers generally don't appreciate political messaging in games, as these groups repeatedly attacked and abused gamers in the past (i.e. gamergate)

Re:Wokness signaling

[RedK]

Actually, there's a lot to be said for gaming companies to hire both women and minorities; these are both groups that it would be valuable to have as customers, but which aren't very well served.

How sexist do you have to be to believe women and minorities need "special" games and can't just play what everyone else plays.

Re:Wokness signaling

[RedK]

How clueless do you have to be to believe games targeted at young white men may contain things that turn off other groups?

Can you explain to me what the difference is between a "young white men" game vs a say "young black men" game ?

Or how the presence of a "Young men" game makes it so "Young female" games can't exist ?

Clueless is the proper word, you just aimed it at the wrong target.

Re:Wokness signaling

[Solandri]

The problem is a mismatch between expectations and reality. SJWs believe without qualifications that men and women are equal. But it's been empirically proven that they're wrong - men and women prefer different types of games. So it's not at all surprising that a culture at a company developing games with a primarily male audience (90% of MOBA players are male) will be skewed towards silly male behavior. Just like I'd expect the culture at a company developing games with a primarily female audience would be skewed towards silly female behavior.

If you ignore the evidence and use the fantasy that the two are equal as your guiding principle, you end up with employment environments which are inferior for producing both types of games (those preferred by men, and those preferred by women). Because you've stripped away part of the development culture which makes the games "click" with their audiences. You gotta be careful to limit your remedies to target actual problems - harassment, demands for sex, withholding promotions based on gender (which to be fair seems to be most of the criticism leveled at Riot). When you start to targeting innocent "male" behaviors like nerf fights in the hall, or the gender ratio of your developers matching the pool of job applicants rather than being 50/50, you've gone too far.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against female gamers or female game developers. One of the most influential video game developers in the genre I preferred when I was growing up (adventure games) was a woman. And I think she was instrumental in breaking home computer games away from the stereotypical shoot-em-up genre popular in arcades. But even she recognized that men and women have different interests.

Re:Wokness signaling

[RedK]

damsel in distress

So you're saying Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros shouldn't ever be made ?

and a total lack of genderqueer characters

You know which game has a total lack of genderqueer characters ?

Pong. It has no Genderqueer characters. It has no gendered characters at all. In fact, it has no characters.

Because that's the kind of content that's largely being opposed;

No one is opposing you making a game about Genderqueer folks who don't save people in distress.

People are opposed to you trying to turn Mario into a Genderqueer drag queen that simply walks in a player picked direction (any direction, wouldn't want to offend lefties!) with no actual goal (no coins, that implies the evils of Capitalism. No mushrooms, as drugs and the war on drugs is a tool of oppression for minorities. No princesses, as that creates a negative gender stereotype. No Bowser or Koopas or Gumbas, as animal cruelty is vile).

Some of us just want to play Mario. You don't like it ? Feel free to pick another game in the vast catalog of thousands of other games that exist.

Is it that bad that they try to appeal to several audiences at the same time?

It's a good way to make a bad product yes. If you try to please everyone, you're most likely to simply end up pleasing no one.

Re:Get Woke Go Broke.

[Joviex]

So now we simply react to "accusations"...

How soon before Riot goes under because of this poisonous ideology.

Well, if they go under becaue they are a shitty business, internally, good riddance?

Success is not only about the physical material wealth a company can produce; especially at the cost of society mental health.

To believe otherwise, is to show how obtuse, or retarded, one is.

Re:SJW time

[AmiMoJo]

Actually they are being sued over it: https://kotaku.com/current-and...

And suspended an exec for "repeatedly touching subordinates balls or butt or farted in their faces." https://kotaku.com/top-riot-ex...

Re:Like Weinstein?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of sensitive SJWs as the canary in the coal mine. Even if their tolerance for BS is lower than yours, chances are that things are not too awesome if they're complaining about their job (it's easy as can be to find another job in the software industry).

That would be a fine way to look at it if the average person labeled "SJW" were just (perhaps overly-)sensitive folks. But that's not the case. The people bearing this label actively seek out what they perceive as social injustice, and where necessary cause that injustice, purportedly to bring light where they see it as needed. These are people who go into a situation, often in droves, with the intent to be offended by something.

That's the bit people don't get. An average worker filing a complaint might get called "SJW" by the company bigot, but most of the rest of the world recognizes that's not who they are or what they're doing. The SJW actively seeks out and destroys cultures they find offensive, and they deserve all the hate they get.

Re:Like Weinstein?

[AmiMoJo]

Have you listened to the tapes? The ones that the police made.

They do not sound like someone negotiating a business transaction. Weinstein badgers the victim, repeatedly and persistently demanding she go to his hotel room even though she keeps strongly refusing.

And even if it was a deal of some kind, the fact that he demonstrably ruined other careers when women refused him means that any future "negotiation" was done under coercion.

Re:Cue...

[RedK]

You are saying that people should stop complaining about their boss touching their balls and farting in their faces?

No, we're saying that Excluding male players from a panel at a convention is wrong :

https://www.polygon.com/2018/9...

It's not like Riot Games is just a bunch of "Dudebros", there's a bunch of SJW types that work there too, none of this is actually new. Riot Games is a mess. On both sides of the political spectrum. Their game community is cancerous, their internal politics are screwed.

If anything, that "Boss" that was "touching balls" wasn't even a "Bro" to begin with, just your typical Male Feminist Ally, which (made up stat) have higher per-capita rates of sexual assault than normal males.

What's wrong with bro culture?

[SmaryJerry]

First of all being sexist isn't being a 'bro.' Second of all, in case anybody forgot bro just means brother. It doesn't mean you are excluding anyone or treating people poorly. Even most 'nerds' and woman bro fist because it is a short handshake. Why can't people just call out individual sexist things when they happen than blame "culture." Seriously, let people do what they want and when it becomes a problem handle that one person that is being sexist or assaulting you. No matter where you are "culture" doesn't take precedence over the laws and the laws in the U.S. are pretty damn stringent. This just sounds like someone is upset that others are having fun (I assume having fun is what they mean by bro culture). SJWs always use "bro" as a negative. Remember calling people "Bernie Bros" if you were a man and like Bernie Sanders just because Bernie wasn't a woman like his opponent in the 2016 democratic primary. Now that I've beaten the word "bro" to death, how about we talk more about just sexist culture. Please don't tell me any group that consist of more men than women makes it sexist. This is generally what these journalist use to confirm sexism in tech. Just having a majority doesn't make the majority evil. Every single person who went to college in the 2000s can confirm that if you took a computer science class it was going to be 90% men. I'd bet woman are over-represented in tech based on college graduation rates in computer science, although I don't have statistics handy. My point is the reason for a majority has nothing to do with sexism and being a minority doesn't make you oppressed. Lumping people into groups based on sex or race is wrong, even against the majority.

Re:Cue...

[RedK]

Wow. They had a bit of time set aside for women and non-binary people, and the snowflakes went ape-shit.

I think the snowflakes in this case would be the people too sensitive to take part in an inclusive event that includes everyone. Everyone being MEN and WOMEN.

The whole event was targetted to snowflakes who can't stand having to share their time with other people. It was actual sexism.

It's not surprising though that you're using snowflake wrong in this case. You'll never admit to being on the wrong side of the actual sexism happening. Let's be clear : Excluding MALES is never inclusive. Including males is never sexist.

Re:Like Weinstein?

[AmiMoJo]

Persistence is coercion, especially when the person being persistent holds your career in their hands. Coerced sex is rape.