{"id":45713,"date":"2018-09-07T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T21:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/326089"},"modified":"2018-09-07T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T21:52:00","slug":"two-riot-employees-depart-after-defending-controversial-pax-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/09\/07\/two-riot-employees-depart-after-defending-controversial-pax-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Riot employees depart after defending controversial PAX panel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Systems designer Daniel Klein and communications associate Mattias Lehman were let go\u00a0from Riot Games yesterday after defending\u00a0<em>League of Legends\u00a0<\/em>PAX West panels\u00a0which were open only to women and non-binary individuals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/9\/7\/17827796\/riot-games-employee-depart-women-only-pax-west-event\">The Verge<\/a> reports, Klein and Lehman,\u00a0who were known to publicly defend\u00a0diversity efforts, left\u00a0company yesterday in response to apparent\u00a0controversy around that PAX session.<\/p>\n<p>The private panel, led by women from Riot, was intended to help women and non-binary participants enter the games industry; men were prohibited from attending.<\/p>\n<p>While men were barred from physically attending the panel, they could still rewatch the panels from Riot\u2019s Instagram account, but the policy was met with anger\u00a0by\u00a0<em>League of Legends <\/em>players\u00a0on Reddit.<\/p>\n<p>After Klein spoke up in defense of the PAX West decision and explained it to Reddit\u00a0users who voiced their criticisms, he confirmed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/9\/7\/17827796\/riot-games-employee-depart-women-only-pax-west-event\">The Verge<\/a><em>\u00a0<\/em>that he was \u201cfired for violating our social media policy.&#8221; It\u00a0currently isn&#8217;t clear what those policies are.<\/p>\n<p>Their departures come\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/323920\/Current_and_former_Riot_employees_discuss_the_toxic_feedback_culture_of_the_studio.php\">a month after\u00a0several current and former Riot employees<\/a> discussed the toxic workplace environment which ultimately\u00a0drove women out of the studio, leading the studio to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/325520\/Riot_Games_details_steps_forward_after_workplace_toxicity_allegations.php\">issue a public apology<\/a> and\u00a0plans to\u00a0correct the company culture that has enabled those past wrongs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/9\/7\/17827796\/riot-games-employee-depart-women-only-pax-west-event\">Riot responded<\/a> in\u00a0a statement to The Verge, saying &#8220;these departures are independent from our efforts to evolve our culture. Our culture remains our top priority, and we remain committed to taking the steps that we need to become a leader in Diversity and\u00a0Inclusion.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Systems designer Daniel Klein and communications associate Mattias Lehman were let go\u00a0from Riot Games yesterday after defending\u00a0League of Legends\u00a0PAX West panels\u00a0which were open only to women and non-binary individuals.\u00a0 As The Verge reports, Klein and Lehman,\u00a0who were known to publicly defend\u00a0diversity efforts, left\u00a0company yesterday in response to apparent\u00a0controversy around that PAX session. The private panel, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45713","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\/45713","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=45713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}