When you think about video game developers, you think about people who simply make video games and that’s it. But, just like any other work environment, there are people in video game studios who make life miserable for others. There’s also workplace strife, tedium, boredom, and disrespect from higher-ups. Riot Games, the team behind League of Legends, have had a lot of allegations through against them in the last year, and now, one of their heads has been suspended without pay for two months for some of these allegations.
Scott Gleb, the COO Of Riot Games, was reported on by many for inappropriate touching employees for the sake of “comedy” as well as many other rude and crude acts. At first, nothing was done about them, even after being reported in. But as news of the misconduct spread, Riot was forced to take action.
Usually, Riot would have kept the punishment in-house, but they made an exception in this case.
“Having said that, we made a very rare exception in the case of our COO, Scott Gelb. There are factors that collectively drive this exception. The Special Committee of the Board of Directors has specifically requested that one of Scott [Gelb]’s consequences be highly visible. Scott holds one of the most senior roles at Riot and is held to a higher level of accountability and visibility, therefore certain consequences are going to be very visible to Rioters. It’s for these reasons I feel it’s necessary to make an exception.”
Despite the punishment being handed down, many of the employees at Riot aren’t happy with the way this went down. Not in support of Gleb, but rather, that his actions didn’t lead to immediate dismissal.
According to Riot, termination did not occur because some of the allegations proven against him were false, although they wouldn’t say which ones.
