{"id":113997,"date":"2020-06-10T21:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T21:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/364542"},"modified":"2020-06-10T21:02:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T21:02:00","slug":"riot-exec-under-internal-scrutiny-for-post-blaming-george-floyds-death-on-his-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/06\/10\/riot-exec-under-internal-scrutiny-for-post-blaming-george-floyds-death-on-his-lifestyle\/","title":{"rendered":"Riot exec under internal scrutiny for post blaming George Floyd’s death on his lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Riot Games is one of many game companies that have rallied in support Black Lives Matter over the last few weeks and vowed to create initiatives<\/a> to support minorities in the tech industry, but the company is now looking into a social media post made by an executive that runs opposite of that public pledge.
 
Vice reports<\/a> that the company has launched an investigation into a post made by Riot\u2019s global head of consumer products Ron Johnson that pairs his own comment that the death of George Floyd is \u201ca learning opportunity for people\u201d alongside an image describing Floyd\u2019s criminal record.
 
George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police after being accused of paying with a counterfeit $20 bill, and his death is the spark that ignited weeks of (yet-ongoing) protests against police violence toward Black people, and larger conversations about systemic racism in society as whole. Vice has shared a copy of Johnson’s Facebook post in the full story<\/a>, along with a statement from Riot Games saying the company has \u201claunched an investigation\u201d into the social media post.
 
“We\u2019ll say firmly that the sentiment in that image is abhorrent, against our values, and directly counter to our belief that addressing systemic racism requires immediate societal change, which we detailed in the commitments we made Friday,\u201d reads that statement. \u201cWhile we don\u2019t discuss the details of our investigations or their outcomes, we’re following our disciplinary process closely and have placed him on leave pending its conclusion.”<\/p>\n

It’s not the first time Riot Games has had to look into the actions of a high ranking executive following internal complaints. The company suspended COO Scott Gelb for two months back in 2018 over allegations of workplace misconduct<\/a> as part of a larger (and still ongoing<\/a>) reaction to accusations that the company fostered a sexist and toxic workplace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Riot Games is one of many game companies that have rallied in support Black Lives Matter over the last few weeks and vowed to create initiatives to support minorities in the tech industry, but the company is now looking into a social media post made by an executive that runs opposite of that public pledge.  Vice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}