Riot Games Reviews

Cons

The traffic surrounding the office.Took about 30 minutes to just get out of the area.

Cons

Widespread and institutionalized sexism. Poor treatment of mothers and expectant mothers, as well as women in general. This is a company that would rather have a free smoothie bar and a PC cafe where people can slack off during work hours than a daycare center. On a campus of over 1000 people, there is literally one small closet for women to pump breast milk in.

 A friend of mine told me recently that HR set up a meeting with her specifically to tell her that because she didn't have a note specifying a medical restriction from her doctor during her pregnancy, that if her performance dropped, she could be fired and would have no legal recourse. This person is clearly very productive and well regarded those she works with. She said it added to her already high level of anxiety about her pregnancy.

In addition to that, all you have to do is look at the ratio of women in leadership positions to realize that there is institutionalized bias against promoting women. This doesn't seem to be improving with time, despite all the lip service management pays toward an effort to have greater diversity in leadership.

Cons

- There is a large contingent of employees who have ONLY worked at Riot games. This isn't necessarily an awful thing, but there is an expectation that "Riot will take care of me no matter what I want to do" and "Riot owes me a certain quality of life" that reeks of tech entitlement. You are human labor. Not to mention, very often these people hopped onto League after it was already in beta and do not have any experience making and shipping an actual game (vs. just game updates or patches). This lack of expertise is often painfully clear.

- Some of the company kool-aid is hokey. "We don't use the 'e' word here. You're a Rioter." Okay, sure, until the day my performance slips and you instantly fire me. I'm sure if you're fresh out of school the internal messaging feels like paradise. For those of us who've been around the block, it just invites deep suspicion.

- The company has a very "bro" atmosphere that is not welcoming to women. Despite obvious efforts to clean up on the diversity front, there is definitely a male-focused culture. I recently had a coworker leave because she didn't feel like she could be a working mother at Riot, and I completely agree. There is still a ton of work to be done and not everyone wants to admit it. You can see this in the defensive replies from HR on this very page.

Cons

Largely due to its size and attempt at a flat matrix a lot of people get left behind. Teams will be doing the same work without knowing it, so some more top down communication would be helpful.

Cons

- Kotaku article scratched the surface of the sexism, sexual harassment and bro culture that exists let alone other D&I issues
- Miscommunication and way too may initiatives & projects + lack of prioritization + fear of failure
- Analysis paralysis
- Entitlement, immaturity and favortism

Cons

Poor leadership experience at the top. League was a huge hit at the time and was more or less an indie startup. The same guys who were the interns, artists, engineers of league early seasons, mediocre by today's standards, are managing teams without actual experience to back it up. They're either painfully aware of this or fooling themselves. Both create horrible paths of toxicity, where vocal employees are quickly exited or silenced, or belittled. Complete dead weight who take credit as much as possible, shut anything down that's not their initiative, leave early, and are the loudest voice in the room. It's extremely easy to take credit for someone else's work due to the culture of 'default to trust'. Pretty easy to push that if you're outright lying about what value you provide. What makes a leader at Riot isn't shipping product or creating, it's if they have a checkmark by their name that says if they took Riot leadership training or not. Or if they're friends with another leader. God help them if Riot ever has layoffs because they'll have a huge wakeup call if they ever go to another studio. If they could trick said company's HR first I guess.

Another odd thing is that failure is rewarded more the higher up you go. A leader who tanked two teams wasn't fired but only 'downgraded' to yet another department(probably with the same pay). Mostly due to him being friends with the owner. Meanwhile core employees quickly get exited or fired, sometimes to the detriment to the team they're on, if they step slightly out of Riot culture or suggest anything that could be seen as unsavory. It really creates an odd double culture of fun and games, and keeping your head down and just do exactly what leadership says. Riot can be a great place. The talent they've hired is outstanding. They need to REALLY trim the fat because there's a large amount of useless running amok in leadership roles. Maybe you guys should have yet another meeting to talk about it?

I think there's change brewing but it'll be too late to even mean anything unless the actual leadership wake the hell up and actually do something instead of yet another overly complicated power point presentation.

Cons

- Leadership isn't accountable for failures
- Managers at Riot are usually good at their craft and bad at managing people

Cons

This is where things get tricky. If you are a “typical Rioter” which is a straight white outspoken male gamer, congratulations, your job is way easier compared to the other 30% of the Rioters in the company.I’ll take some time to address the first 5 issues that come to mind.

Feedback culture means that your managers or colleagues that work with you will give you all sorts of feedback. During a performance cycle, an employee was told that “you need to smile more often, I like to see a smile when I come to the office”. Reviews written by managers are changed DURING THE CYCLE when they see that you had given them bad feedback. Women are called emotional often, and it’s okay for the male colleagues in the office to scream and get agitated while partaking in a game, but if a woman stands up for her idea, or feels strongly about her idea, it’s deemed emotional and laughed off.

With the recent sexual harassment articles out, any sensible person would assume that good people in Talent (which is their name for HR) would make it compulsory for all managers and folks in talent to attend some form of harassment training. Unfortunately, there has already been a case where the local talent “lead” has decided to not partake in the session.

This is a boy’s club company. Leadership positions are mostly filled with men who are friends with other men. Promotions are not awarded always awarded based on merit. Employees with strong performances may get a change in title, and a token increment.

Speaking of titles, look out for all the inflated titles in Riot. There are many single contributors who gave themselves the titles of Team Leads,even without a team under them. Look out for these inaccuracies on email signatures, linkedin profiles and even resumes.

There has been tons of conversation over the past year trying to address the toxic culture and the multiple bro culture of the company. Emails were sent out about how “no one is untouchable” and that there is a “zero tolerance towards retaliation”, in the hopes that employees will report cases of harassment, regardless the form. Unfortunately, not only have employees who have reported these cases to Talent been penalised and ultimately let go, managers received a slap on the wrist and business continued as usual.

Cons

Riot grew really fast and there's work needed to mature company systems and processes. Riot resists doing simple things that are standard across a lot of industries, because we think we're so unique, those things won't apply. We almost always come around, but it can be frustrating to waste so much time revisiting basics, instead of asking how other company's have solved basic problems. This mostly comes from inexperienced leaders.

Cons

This is a company that exhibits poor non-technical and technical leadership both. They have lofty aspirations that in no way match the actual talent deployed, and structure by which it operates. The level of productivity one experiences on a given day is alarmingly low, and the ratio of useful people to useless people is similar. It feels like most people are there to hang out and look pretty.