Two prominent feminists have left Riot, developer of League of Legends.

Why it's important: The game industry is known for its sexist culture and, after a presentation by Kotaku last month, Riot Games was particularly criticized for discriminating against women. David Klein and Mattias Lehman were two of Riot's most daring feminists, but they are out of work and there is no official explanation.

A little over a week ago, Riot Games issued an official apology on its website – they promised that "inclusion, diversity, respect and equality are not "negotiable" and that is their "priority". The riot workers came out with stories of disrespectful, sexualized, insulted women, paid less for the same job and ignored the promotion, whose apology was badly needed. As one of their first acts to create a better environment for female and non-binary players, Riot created a panel at PAX West last weekend that did not allow men to focus on League of Legends artistic design, game production and narrative writing. and cosplay. Many fans were furious and called it sexist itself, but against riot politics, Klein took Twitter and Reddit to call them misogynists and even call them "manbabies". Lehman supported his friend and defended him. They left the company soon after and Riot insists that it had nothing to do with their positions on discrimination.

It would be easy to say that Riot simply dismissed them for advocating feminism, an anonymous employee of Riot even suggested that. It would also be easy to say that they were just rude to the fans and deserved to lose their jobs. Both arguments have merit, but first consider the chain of events that led to this.

Kotaku conducted a thorough investigation of Riot's sexist culture by interviewing many employees. It is well worth a read, but in short, they found that women were unable to break through the "brother culture" that permeates the business. Women were essentially banned from management positions, jokes were made that they were hired only for their appearance. A notable example of Kotaku's source is an experiment she conducted after her idea was rejected at a meeting. She asked a friend to present the same idea to the same group a few days later and they greeted her as being brilliant. Male and female employees left the company because of their opinions on sexism, some by choice, others not.

A few days after Riot had discovered Kotaku's investigation, they put a page on their website to say how committed they were to gender equality.

Riot Games employees are 80% men

The investigation is out and many fans of League of Legends have been very unimpressed. Riot apologized three weeks later.

As part of a larger two-day event at PAX in Seattle, Riot included a room in which only women and non-binary people were allowed. The goal was to create "sessions to support women and non-binary people interested in engaging in professional games". The program included the review of CVs and tips among the most typical art presentations, storytelling, design and production. There was some confusion about this on Reddit, so I would just like to point out that almost all of Riot's activities were open to all genres.

If you read some examples, you will find that many players were very angry and disappointed. They said it was stupid, unpleasant for male gamers, that they thought back and that they were not helping to solve sexism. The vast majority of them said that the exclusion of male players was unnecessary and discriminatory.

Daniel Klein became the target of this anger when he pulled out a long tweet to say that those who complained were manbabies, toddlers, rubbish, and many other words to which I am sure you can think without my having to write them. He has made the point that men are incredibly overrepresented in games and will receive a "billion" of other opportunities that women and non-binary will not get, and that an exclusive event like this will This can be a highlight for women and non-binary people because it's exclusive. There was no exclusive content in the presentation – it looked cool – but it was to celebrate the culture of equality. Many people agreed with him, but his statements that it was impossible to be sexist towards men were particularly controversial.

After the publication of the Kotaku investigation, Mattias Lehman published an article detailing the racism and sexism he witnessed in Riot. Despite his very strong (and as we now know) fears about the safety of his job because of his open position, he considered Klein's situation as yet another opportunity to defend equality. He defended Klein and jumped in front of the smoking gun.

Now, the players on Reddit and Twitter were calling Riot to fire them for being too aggressive towards the community. Since then, they no longer work for the company.

Riot tweeted that they expected the "rioters to act with respect." They state that they are strongly committed to improving diversity and equality. Various sources stated that within Riot there had been a lot of excitement about this event. Many are grateful that all this is brought to light, some are shocked and grateful that they have discovered, and of course, some say that it is far too aggressive, the wrong way to proceed and discrimination against men.

This is the end of the story. Whether or not they have taken the project too far, I sincerely congratulate Klein and Lehman for having so strongly defended what they believe and hope that they will find success in another studio of games.