{"id":38497,"date":"2018-08-07T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/323920"},"modified":"2018-08-07T21:08:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T21:08:00","slug":"current-and-former-riot-employees-discuss-the-toxic-feedback-culture-of-the-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/08\/07\/current-and-former-riot-employees-discuss-the-toxic-feedback-culture-of-the-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"Current and former Riot employees discuss the toxic feedback culture of the studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I\u2019ve seen myself argue endlessly for the value of something, and for that thing to never be taken seriously until a man or a player said it.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– An anonymous former employee speaking to Kotaku about the work culture at Riot.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a recent interview\u00a0with Kotaku<\/a>, several current and former Riot employees discuss the toxic workplace environment which ultimately\u00a0drives women out of the studio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fellow devs should note that\u00a0several sources spoke\u00a0to Kotaku over the past few months, and each one came\u00a0to the same consensus around what makes Riot a hostile environment for some of the women who work there: the culture.<\/p>\n

According to these sources, the feedback culture at Riot rewards men and demeans women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kristen Fuller, who departed Riot back in March, explains\u00a0she got interrupted\u00a0a lot. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get a word in edgewise,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking and someone else starts talking and starts to talk louder when I don\u2019t stop. A lot of men don\u2019t take no for an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another former employee, who remains anonymous, describes how her largely-male division often insulted\u00a0her after\u00a0she refused to do\u00a0secretarial work, despite her non-secretary position. \u201cI feel like that type of working environment caters to men,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went to a stand-up meeting it\u2019d be a lot of men talking over each other. I knew a lot of women were used to being interrupted or not feeling comfortable talking over men. I didn\u2019t feel like I had the ability to talk over them,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

The apparent double standard for women within the company have made the culture of aggression worse.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve seen myself argue endlessly for the value of something, and for that thing to never be taken seriously until a man or a player said it,\u201d echoes\u00a0a former employee.<\/p>\n

Women who do speak up and follow Riot’s\u00a0on-paper ideals are reprimanded, often told that they’re being too loud and emotional. Male employees who spoke to Kotaku\u00a0agreed that\u00a0Riot\u2019s feedback culture wasn\u2019t built to support women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company dismisses feedback when it comes to gender,\u201d explains a\u00a0male employee. \u201cRiot is a new upstart company whose explicit mottos are \u2018Challenge convention\u2019 and \u2018Feedback culture.\u2019 To not see that reflected in the way Riot addresses social issues feels extra bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it’s worth noting that there are women within Riot who are actively trying to work on improving the conditions expressed by current and former Rioters.\u00a0Soha El-Sabaawi, who leads diversity and inclusion initiatives at Riot, explains\u00a0how she\u2019s training leaders at Riot to recognize different personality types in meetings and\u00a0empower marginalized groups, including women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We are trying to create touchpoints with Rioters about what good feedback looks like,” El-Sabaawi says. “Just because we have an open feedback culture doesn\u2019t just mean you can send someone a lot of super harsh feedback without context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Katie Chironis, a senior narrative designer\u00a0who has been at Riot for two months, echoed El-Sabaawi’s\u00a0statements\u00a0in a tweet<\/a>\u00a0about working to cultivate a better environment for women at the studio.<\/p>\n

“To all the women out there who were ever hurt by men above them, who were denied promotions, spoken over, harassed, objectified, or insulted, i have been you at some point in my past, and i stand in solidarity with you.”<\/p>\n

The investigative piece\u00a0was part of a longer interview around the workplace culture at Riot,\u00a0so\u00a0be\u00a0sure to read it in its entirety\u00a0over at Kotaku.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I\u2019ve seen myself argue endlessly for the value of something, and for that thing to never be taken seriously until a man or a player said it.” – An anonymous former employee speaking to Kotaku about the work culture at Riot. In a recent interview\u00a0with Kotaku, several current and former Riot employees discuss the toxic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38497","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\/38497","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=38497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}