Riot Offers Six-Month Progress Report Following Harassment Controversy

By Stefanie Fogel

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – “League of Legends” developer Riot Games just launched new diversity and culture pages on its official website, along with a six-month progress report on its ongoing efforts to make the studio a more inclusive workplace.

A Kotaku investigation published in August 2018 detailed stories of gender discrimination, workplace toxicity, and sexual harassment from 28 current and former Riot employees. The studio’s chief operating officer, Scott Gelb , received two months of unpaid leave after allegations of inappropriate and unprofessional behavior towards subordinates.

In the six months since, the developer has taken steps to fix its company culture. It created a team specifically to spearhead this change and hired former Uber executive Frances Frei as a senior adviser. It brought in two leading consultants on culture change and company systems to conduct audits, and it rebuilt its investigation process and systems with the help of a law firm.

“We investigated dozens of new claims, conducted hundreds of interviews, and took appropriate action in each case, including cutting ties with Rioters at almost all levels of the company where appropriate,” it said.

Riot is also making “big strides” in training and educating its employees. All workers are now required to take anti-harassment and anti-bias training. Hundreds of them participated in two live company-wide team building simulations in Fall 2018, and Riot said it’s looking forward to adding more to the program this year.

In total, the developer said more than 2,500 employees completed over 12,000 hours of training between September 2018 and January 2019.

But, the company still has some work to do when it comes to recruiting. It’s changing some of the questions it asks potential employees during interviews and it’s overhauling job descriptions to ensure they’re accessible to all demographic groups. It also plans to reassess which universities it recruits from and expand the talent pool it draws candidates from.

“We know the path forward is long and winding, and that we have changes to make if we want to get it right. But we’re excited to push forward toward a new, better Riot,” the company said.