The editor of League of Legends and of Valorant, which had been attacked by employees, will pay them compensation. The acts of sexist discrimination and harassment within Riot Games had been denounced as early as 2018.
Millions of dollars in damages: that’s what Riot Games is about to pay to more than 1,500 women. The developer, who was attacked by a group of current and former employees for acts of sexist discrimination and harassment, finally chose to make an agreement with the victims. THE settlement of $100 million was passed in July 2022.
Now it’s up to Riot to get their hands on the wallet — and according to Axios, on May 8, 2023, the company just started disbursing payouts. The agreement reached with the victims provides for a payment of several thousand dollars per person, an important victory for the victims, and more generally, for all workers in the video game sector.
100 million dollars to end the lawsuit
The agreement between the parties calls for Riot to make an initial payment of between $2,500 and $5,000 to women employed by the company between November 2014 and December 2021. The agreement provides for additional payments, up to $40,000. dollars, depending on the status of the employees.
The payment comes years after the start of the legal proceedings. The complaint was filed in 2018 by an employee and a former employee of Riot Games, who both denounced acts of sexist discrimination, sexual harassment and unequal pay within the company.
The complaint had been filed a few months after a long investigation by Kotaku, in which the media revealed the extent of the “ culture of sexism in the studios. The newspaper thus revealed that the company’s recruitment methods favored men more than women, and that they were listened to more during meetings and group meetings. In addition to discrimination, the witnesses to the investigation mainly denounced acts of sexual harassment and very inappropriate behavior: it was in particular a question of a chain of emails, in which men would have discussed how one of their colleagues could “ to be penetrated “.
After filing a complaint in 2018, the company and the plaintiffs reached a first agreement in 2019, for $10 million in damages. However, the state of California, where the trial was taking place, opposed the deal, saying it was too low. The new arrangement, amounting this time to 100 million dollars, was found in July 2022, but still required the agreement of the judges. It’s now done.
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