After Kotaku absolutely blew the lid off of a culture of Riot Games sexism, sourcing 28 first-hand accounts from current and former employees, Riot Games has officially responded with an action plan and a number of steps meant to make the company a safer work environment for women.
After opening with several apologies and statements to fans, employees and partners, the company post outlines a number of new positions and initiatives that are being put in place to address sexism in both the game’s office itself and in its hiring processes.
These steps include the hiring of a new Chief Human Resources Officer and a Chief Diversity Officer; opening up an anonymous hotline for people to report issues as well as evaluating claim investigation processes; hiring two third-party consultants to evaluate the company; and overhauling recruitment practices and training.
In addition, the post mentioned that more direct action would be taken on specific employees including firings, though details weren’t provided for legal and privacy reasons.
“We’ve always believed that Riot should be the home for the very best talent in gaming. It’s clear we’ve fallen short of that goal,” closes the post. “But we’ve never backed down from a challenge before and we don’t plan to start now.”
Our Thoughts
Those are a whole lot of pretty words, to be sure, but those will still ring hollow until there’s some honest and noticeable action taken at Riot Games. We suspect that there will be a follow-up at some time later down the line to see if these initiatives have actually made an appreciable difference.
Source: Riot Games website
Related: Games Industry, Legal Trouble, News, Riot GamesRelated: Game Development
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