Inside The ‘Bro Culture’ At Riot Games

There’s a show called ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ which I am an ardent fan of. The core cast consists of 4 guys and a girl, who make nonsensical and devious plans against others. One such episode saw the girl hatching a plan immediately shot down by the rest. The same plan, when mentioned by a guy, got their approval. This might be television, but mirrors in real-life too. An employee at Riot Games made her case concerning this fact. One of her ideas got struck down by the management, so she asked one of her male colleagues to present the same idea a few days later. And voila, it got approved! The employee also spoke out against constant comments regarding her being a woman, be it regarding her family or her looks. Sadly, this is not an isolated case.

The company is known for the widely popular game ‘League of Legends’, which has been one of the top selling titles since its inception, with more than 100 million users, while also forming and organizing its own tournament. The company has however, had the ‘bro culture’ in existence for a while, which is an environment that has gender inequality at its forefront, while also promoting toxic masculinity. This can be quite a surprising news, for a company that in 2013, was named as one of the 25 top technology companies worth working for. This might not be the only example, as different industries ranging from fields such as science to cinema, all have promoted such culture in their own discreet ways. Kotaku, the organization which came forward with this story, spoke to 28 employees of the company, both current and former, all of whom corroborated with the story. With stories ranging from e-mail threads containing degrading posts about female co-workers, to female employees being snubbed for top positions in favour of male employees, theirs has been a story of ingrained bro-culture within the organization. Another female employee detailed about the harsh tone of her interview when she joined the company, where the interviewer looked for inconsistencies in her answers just so that he could he have an excuse for not hiring her (she was hired ultimately, as she confidently answered everything).

The company, on its part, refuted the claims, while also promising that such allegations would be looked into (that’s the usual). It’s only recently that companies have started diversifying more to attain gender equality, but even then there is a pervasive culture of toxic behaviour among men. The underlying issue of men feeling superior can be seen from the recent example of the NASA scientist Katie Bouman, who developed an algorithm that helped gather clear pictures of the black hole. Immediately after, certain videos and stories started doing the rounds claiming how she did only some part of the work, thus discrediting her theory. As it stands, the bro-culture is an offshoot of the male-dominant mind-set, and it will take quite an effort to combat that.