Thread by @MiniWhiteRabbit

I’m in this article. @cecianasta has done a wonderful job nailing down what it feels like to work at Riot as a woman.

Since I’m seeing other women recount their experiences, I will do the same.

THREAD

https://twitter.com/cecianasta/status/1026912827435610113

Ijoined in late 2015. I was thrilled. I had played LoL for years prior and was picked up specifically for my knowledge on building livestreams from nothing as well as podcasting.

When I joined, our team was 3 people. That grew to 4, after another team’s reshuffling.

But our region had a lot of issues early on. People left and so did half of our team. We were doing the League of Legends livestream on twitch out of a closet and scrambling to put together the podcast each episode.

It was a labor of love and my manager was kind …

And understanding. I remember sitting with him one meeting, begging to get a third person. We were told we were in a hiring freeze because of the lack of upper leadership.

We had tech issues (that damn audio buzz) but no $$$ to fix it. I lost sleep. I had panic attacks.

I worked so hard to ensure that the stream worked but frequently, only one person was behind it (tech side) because my manager and I traded off. He had a family and I didn’t want to pull him from that.

We toured other equipment setups that would solve the problem.

We spent a year doing the work of four people with two. I begged for help and my manager said he was trying. I believed him and still do. We confided in each other how tired we both were.

In this time, I spent so much time holding hands of women going through harassment at Riot. My own boyfriend was left a crying heap over Taric before he was pulled off of the project for no reason. I remember holding him and telling him how talented he was.

He went through hell. He was told how great the Fiora rework was and after it shipped and he got blowback, his job was threatened. In one meeting on Taric, he was told how great it all was. How awesome he was doing.

Then his manager told him he was being put on a personal …

Improvement plan. He was gaslit constantly. He was inconsolable some nights. I was told I wasn’t allowed to put him in a place where he could talk to players and he was told he wasn’t allowed to engage with them at all. He was off limits to the community.

Then he was fired.

Days later, I sat outside on Riot grounds when I heard a convo between his two fellow team members, one of which insisted he was his friend. His “friend” said, Well can you IMAGINE if we didn’t take him off of that? Like what WAS that.

It took him six months to want to really draw again. At the end, he told his manager it was okay he was fired because he needed therapy to stay at Riot and it wasn’t worth it anymore.

I held so many hands…

Multiple women confided in me about being sexually harassed at work. About their asses being slapped, being groped at parties, or being raped at Riot events.

At first it was shocking. Then it became standard.

When my manager left, I got passed around from manager to manager. I had five managers in two years. I got scolded for taking therapy visits. My therapy frequently became about managing my stress at Riot. I’d cry and have anxiety attacks. Xanax became my coping mechanism on

And off campus. I remember having to take half a pill to just get through some 1:1s with my manager because I was petrified I would be fired or told I was doing something wrong, despite that I was the only sole person running the stream or knew how to.

I begged for more people. I begged for a space. I begged for a budget. I explained countless times why we needed new equipment. It was exhausting. That kind of exhausting that just feels hopelessly sad after awhile.

That’s why the stream was the way it was. Eventually we put together a raggedy team of people who could give parts of their time to the project.

I loved it. I believed in it. I fought for it. The podcast, too, though I had to give it up because I was only one person.

People busted their asses for that Twitch stream. Each one was scary.

But I got told over and over again that we needed more time to prove our the value of it. I had coworkers tell me that Rioters approached them who wanted to stream. He referred them to me but they

Wanted a man’s opinion. I felt like no one ever listened to me. I just felt like I was screaming into a void for help. I got talked over. I got told to “step up and be a leader.” I got dangled leadership in front of me constantly.

I felt like I was going insane. I had to be angry — literally angry — to be considered a leading voice in meetings. That was the only time I was complimented on how I “stepped up.”

I was literally the only one at Riot that knew how the fuck to stream but I was never considered a leader. I was never given a raise or a promotion. At the end, I was removed from development teams and had the stream wound down against my wants.

I asked for guidance at Riot from my manager and was told Riots a place for people to thrive in ambiguity. I was working PAX events and development cycles and never even got introductions into the community members I managed. I was invisible everywhere.

In February 2018, I was asked by my manager if I was happy there. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and my body broke into tears. I said I had been fighting for so long and so hard and Riot just had no idea what to do with me. I asked, Do you even know what to do with me?

I spent three weeks under the last manager I was placed under. One on PTO. He told me, Well if your resume came across my desk I’d at least want to see if you’re a good fit before ruling you out.

I offered to help him write the community plan that hadn’t been written.

He insisted we defer to senior male leadership over my expertise, over and over. Eventually, it lead up to a stream where our equip wasn’t good enough. Me and IT ran around on campus looking for a new processor for the CPU.

I eventually offered to go home for my own. Instead, I was angrily cut off and later told to “Go home. Don’t come in for the stream. We will speak on Monday.”

I walked out embarrassed, humiliated. In tears.

I quit that Monday.

I love so many people at Riot. I have a handful of people there that are friends. But I have PTSD due to that place and this industry. Even writing this is giving me shakes but it’s been a wound that has never quite healed right. Talking about it at least frees me of the fear.

I’m getting people asking if they can RT. Yes, please. I want this industry to change. I want it to treat women better. I want no other woman to be told in a whispered voice, “I like making my girlfriend scream” during a company dinner.

I’m 100% certain that my advancement in games has been ruined because I am an attractive woman. I’ve had my manager come onto me and turned him down, only to be denied promotion a month later. I know I’d be further along if I were a man.

I’ve had rumors spread about me BY MY MANAGER at a PAX West event that I was cheating on my BF and “fucking” a colleague and friend. This industry has humiliated me and hurt me in unimaginable ways and I’m not even the worst story I’ve heard. I’m just “a story.”

And one last add about Riot. Most of the women there I knew were making $55k-$65k. In Los Angeles. Where went is $2800-3300/mo. I was a “top earner” in my discipline at $75k because my first manager fought for me. One of my friends who had been there 6 years was making 10k less.

I just want to add I’m leaving out a TON of details around Riot. It’s truly one of the most gaslighting places I’ve worked and I worked at a studio where the two lead designers screamed at each other in the back meeting room.

It appears my comments on Reddit about this have been removed. I didn’t remove them.

I wanted to make sure what I said was clear and I realize it wasn’t (I’m kind of a shaky mess).

I know of one or two events at Riot where a rape occurred that went unreported out of fear. It wasn’t like a regular thing where you round up women and rape them or something.

Riot DOES take those things seriously once reported. However, most of it goes unreported as do most rapes. Additionally, many women felt this kind of abuse occurred because of the culture of the company was very “boys club.”

I’m really sorry for causing confusion there.