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Six Months at Riot Games

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Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#151

Post by stickfigure »

eksemplar wrote: post #52
lsmarigo wrote: post #40

Interesting that this one is doing well compared to the longer in-depth kotaku article a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710188 - fwiw that piece has since been corroborated by a ton of former riot employees on twitter. At the risk of sounding overly cynical, this is all true and everyone knows about it, people feign disgust at these articles but we're all complicit and understanding that this is…

This is not the way things are though. I’m a manager, and I wouldn’t tolerate any of the painted stories for a second. In fact, none of the people in my network, which includes numerous large Scandinavian tech companies would tolerate anything of the sort. You do see that stuff, of course, but you see it mainly in children aged 10-15, and otherwise only in private, because anyone who keeps it up after that will be un…

If this is commonplace in America workplace, then you truely are an odd country.

This statement seems odd in this context. While Riot may be headquartered in the US, all of the events in the article took place in Ireland.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#152

Post by e_proxus »

eksemplar wrote: post #52
lsmarigo wrote: post #40

Interesting that this one is doing well compared to the longer in-depth kotaku article a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710188 - fwiw that piece has since been corroborated by a ton of former riot employees on twitter. At the risk of sounding overly cynical, this is all true and everyone knows about it, people feign disgust at these articles but we're all complicit and understanding that this is…

This is not the way things are though. I’m a manager, and I wouldn’t tolerate any of the painted stories for a second. In fact, none of the people in my network, which includes numerous large Scandinavian tech companies would tolerate anything of the sort. You do see that stuff, of course, but you see it mainly in children aged 10-15, and otherwise only in private, because anyone who keeps it up after that will be un…

There's obviously a scale of how things are at various workplaces, and how acceptable various things are in different cultures.

I've worked at a gaming company in Europe before where among other things female team members told me they've been asked by someone "how it feels to have the biggest boobs in the team" when another female in the team left.

The company later introduced an inclusivity effort and a code of conduct, and felt obliged to offer an AMA (because "new and scary thing" or whatever). They got questions like "should we now lower our hiring standards because we want to hire more women?" and "will there be any punishments if you break the CoC?" to which the answer was "of course not, don't worry". It felt like they just did these things to show an effort, not to actually follow through on them. Leadership was of course all white middle-age straight male.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#153

Post by olavgg »

shawn wrote: post #87
TillE wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seriously can't think of a single idea for how to ban toxic players at scale? Start with crowd-sourcing via reports, then pass it over to customer service once a critical mass has been achieved. Make sure one person can't easily create a new account after being banned. This really isn't a new problem, tons of companies of all sizes have tackled it with varying success.

Spoken like someone who’s never played the game. Get ready to be banned for no fault of your own, just because your three teammates decided to report you for the lulz. There are people who post on /r/dota2 complaining that they get banned from the game for nothing but picking techies each game. They don’t even say anything. People just report them immediately. By the way, streamers are one of the most high impact use…

I've been playing DOTA since the Warcraft 3 days, and a lot of HoN. I'm seriously grateful for the excellent Linux client.

Today I've moved over to Dota 2 and now I see that I no longer get banned and moved to unranked for picking techies. I play him at ancient/divine levels and getting reported is very common. Techies is my favorite hero as he is more about strategy than quick precise reactions. I think Valve has done some progress in this area, especially as you now can commend players.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#154

Post by stickfigure »

lsmarigo wrote: post #40

Interesting that this one is doing well compared to the longer in-depth kotaku article a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710188 - fwiw that piece has since been corroborated by a ton of former riot employees on twitter. At the risk of sounding overly cynical, this is all true and everyone knows about it, people feign disgust at these articles but we're all complicit and understanding that this is…

this one is doing well compared to the longer in-depth kotaku article

This article rocketed to 180+ points in two hours, yet it's already on the second page and falling fast. Moderator activity? Flagging? Some algorithmic quirk?

Possibly the first article had the same problem. There's enough hidden behavior on HN that I don't think you can trust individual story ranking to express anything about the HN community. Unfortunately, because this is an interesting story.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#155

Post by Liquix »

shawn wrote: post #119
lubonay wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, you are not the company. If anybody speaks for the company as a whole, it's the CEO.

Sure, but bucketing a company as racist just because someone said the n word once in 2009 isn’t productive. It’s like calling pewdiepie racist.

"Bucketing a company as racist" is not the point. The point is that the CEO is the head of, represents, and consequentially speaks for the company. Their personal opinions are reflected in the company's internal and external image. Don't we all have better things to do than argue moot points in nested comment threads? ;)

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#156

Post by zimablue »

lubonay wrote: post #46

Here's an idea: the gaming community as a whole needs to come together and think of the most offensive insults possible, that do not refer to race/gender/religion/nationality, but rather refer to player skill or the wider gaming culture. We can have a non-phobic, egalitarian swear-off!

Once something is agreed as an acceptable insult it's not as much of an insult. This it like trying to hold back the tide.

Much the same way that the medical word for what used to be called retardation and I don't know the current PC word for has to be constantly rotated. Whatever that word is, is precisely what people want to call each-other.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#157

Post by tinco »

stickfigure wrote: post #151
eksemplar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the way things are though. I’m a manager, and I wouldn’t tolerate any of the painted stories for a second. In fact, none of the people in my network, which includes numerous large Scandinavian tech companies would tolerate anything of the sort. You do see that stuff, of course, but you see it mainly in children aged 10-15, and otherwise only in private, because anyone who keeps it up after that will be un…

If this is commonplace in America workplace, then you truely are an odd country. This statement seems odd in this context. While Riot may be headquartered in the US, all of the events in the article took place in Ireland.

It would indeed be very nice to assume this is somehow unique to the US. Europe has many countries that are notorious for their machismo, or their adherence to religious beliefs that are condescending towards women. I would say Scandinavian attitude is more likely to be unique in the world than vice versa.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#158

Post by slivym »

pandasun wrote: post #120

The amount of white knights in this thread is absurd. She provided zero evidence and everyone is jumping to her rescue. Maybe wait for evidence first? Typical SF culture. Imagine if this was a guy accusing a woman. But that's different right? Yeah yeah, downvotes incoming... I'll take it..

Excuse me, but she's writing about her personal experience - what evidence would you expect her to provide? If you hear someone shout the n word in an office and later tell me about it, should I disbelieve you? How about if you tell me, and a number of other people also tell me? Do I say no- you need to provide evidence. Even when no one has actually denied it happened? What about if a reporter who fact checks their stories tells me? Do I still disbelieve it?

There is literally nothing anyone can say to persuade you.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#159

Post by vertex-four »

inertiatic wrote: post #144

I'm a male software developer that cringes hard when hearing things like that, and I can't imagine using that sort of language in the workplace. In fact I'm part of an all male team at work and things like that get thrown around all day long, and I find it annoying at times. At the same time I detest the forced political correctness. And most of the time, all of those terms aren't actually hateful, but used in an pla…

Perhaps in theory people should be free to express themselves how they want, but we should question why on earth people want to express themselves in these ways and work to solve that.

In the meantime, however, we live in an imperfect society where people are terrible, this does have consequences, and there does need to be some counterbalance against that - otherwise we’d be living happily in an anarchist utopia already.

Re: Six Months at Riot Games

#160

Post by EliRivers »

lmm wrote: post #74
EliRivers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be suggesting that such a culture is not an impediment to success, based on the existence of some success. I could blindfold myself and throw darts at a board. The fact that I hit the board sometimes doesn't mean that the blindfold isn't an impediment. Many more movies fail before even reaching the screen. Just because we see some success doesn't mean that the culture isn't an impediment to success. Perha…

If you won competitive darts championships while blindfolded, that would suggest the blindfold wasn't an impediment. Given how long the movie industry has been around and how many studios have gone bankrupt through competition, I would think that any cultures that significantly impeded productivity would have been stamped out by now.

"If you won competitive darts championships while blindfolded, that would suggest the blindfold wasn't an impediment."

How many of the other competitors were blindfolded?

How many of the other movie studios have this culture?

"I would think that any cultures that significantly impeded productivity would have been stamped out by now."

Evolution doesn't always lead to better final outcomes. In a culture of dickheads, being a slightly bigger dickhead can give a personal advantage. Soon, everyone is a raging dickhead. The same applies to companies. The same applies to species (although with them it's not so much "raging dickhead" as "some small individually advantageous feature").

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