Hey everyone, Riot Smileyjoe here. I work in Riot comms and have been working with this journalist for the last few weeks to get Riot’s view into the piece.

We appreciate that the reporter took the time to reach out to us, but since Kotaku didn’t include the full statement, I wanted to make sure this community saw the full response we sent.

Riot Culture

We strive to cultivate a unique culture that positions us to best deliver amazing player experiences: one where we obsessively focus on players; one where every Rioter has equal opportunity to be heard, grow their role, advance in the organization, and fulfill their potential; and one where open feedback helps us all get better.

The key word there is “strive”--our cultural values are aspirational and we’re realistic about the fact that the values and behaviors in our manifesto aren’t always perfectly reflected in the reality of the experiences of Rioters across Riot. Talking over women in meetings, promoting/hiring anyone less de...

Trashacc5436

I appreciate that Riot is quick to reply, and i think that this statement is an important one.

The key word there is “strive”--our cultural values are aspirational and we’re realistic about the fact that the values and behaviors in our manifesto aren’t always perfectly reflected in the reality of the experiences of Rioters across Riot.

I think you're going to find sexism, and interpreted sexism, in any situation in which the genders interact. I doubt that it could ever be truly prevented, but it certainly needs to be addressed. My concern is what steps exactly is Riot taking to address it? The D&I program discussed sounds like it could be the right response, but the information presented is fairly vague. Revamped HR, new manager, task force, none of that really tells us what riot is doing in regards to the situation. It sure sounds like they're doing something, but corporations are exceptionally skilled at putting out statements that make it sound like they're doing what they're supposed to do.

So my further questions for Riot would be, what exactly does this cross disciplinary task force do? Who is this D&I manager? How does the renewed focus of the HR department translate into action?

Some really good questions that I should have hit /u/Trashacc5436

The team that works on this stuff wrote this up a couple months ago to talk about what they've been up to https://www.riotgames.com/en/work-with-us/diversity-and-inclusion

Love this! Hope it’s okay if I make it my desktop background through the holidays.

CARDBOARDWARRIOR

A nameless rank and file soldier in over his head, holding on by the skin of his teeth. In other words, helmet guy.

We do already have a conference room named for him...that’s gotta be like 90% of the work, right?

Cashmiir

I like to call him Thomas the Kench Engine.

Riot Hichui, Riot Anjackson, and I agree you’ve never once said this out loud. You’ve been holding out on us.

The_Cactopus

do not do this

uwu

BiteSizedTaco

https://imgur.com/HM8zgmc

I also got one. I don't know who the person in the picture is, but I just want to tell her thanks for making my day :)

Don’t worry—we’ll make sure she sees this. Awesome summoner name btw!

TheSkyUnderUs

Ordered. Very exciting - surprised they didn't play this up on the 10 year stream more.

Check out the section with the sound and music dept (after Ghostcrawler before Legends Never Die). Riot Iceburrg makes a special delivery to one of the rooms.

kishijevistos

Yeah where is he?

New001 is very much around. He runs the group that oversees League PC, TFT, and Wild Rift. So you’ll see plenty of Joe but we also want to make sure you see badasses like Jess too.

TheeOmegaPi

Cashmiir is such a great writer! I love these weekly updates!

That bring said, I can't wait for more events like this in the future. Kindred's story was hands down the best.

Cashmiir is always amazing but all her stuff for Spirit Blossom has been next-level good

MoredhelEUW

We do not deserve you.

I hope Riot will do some kind of list on their website at some point ;)

Good job mate

Around two years ago we started building out a section of riot.com as a video hub but killed the project. We were worried it wouldn’t improve on the experience of a YouTube playlist and we also got a little stuck on how to categorize the videos (does Get Jinxed go in a music videos section or a champion section?).

I’m still not sure about the YouTube question, but this definitely shows we were overthinking it with the categories, lol. It’s an awesome list.

2th

(does Get Jinxed go in a music videos section or a champion section?).

Why not put it in both categories? There is nothing wrong with overlapping content tags sometimes.

That was definitely an option we were looking at. The content management system we use for riot.com is a little funky so we hit a couple barriers in terms of providing a nice, slick UI while still serving videos in a way where you could find what you were looking for quickly. It was either a long boring list of links or endless scrolling (for the longer categories). All solveable stuff but it kept coming back to the YouTube playlist experience being hard to beat.

As we were working on the project it also felt like it was getting further away from its original purpose which had been to celebrate the partners we work with on these. We ultimately just started editing the video descriptions to add credits like we’ve been doing since “Welcome Aboard” (for Odyssey) or shortly after.

I’d still like to revisit this project because we have so much good stuff that it’s easy to forget about some of the hidden gems. Especially as we’ve gone multiproduct I dream of a central hub with all the c...