Several current and ex employees at Riot Games have accused the company of disciplining female developers for posting swimsuit pictures to their personal social media accounts, forcing them to delete the images in question. It's also claimed that Riot has a policy to stop developers complaining about male developers "walking around in t shirts emblazoned with bikini models."This news was first revealed by SNazerine - a software engineer for Valorant - on their personal Twitter account, although several other employees have replied to the intial tweet confirming similar experiences. One such employee is Twitter user is swampyhag - associate producer for gameplay on Valorant - who simply replies with "sad but true!"While this alleged policy is all kinds of wrong to begin with, many are pointing out clear hypocrisy on the part of Riot Games. The company has regularly sold and profited from bikini skins for its female champions in its titles like League of Legends, but are allegedly forcing female staff to remove similar pictures from their social media accounts.
For many who are familiar with Riot Games or some of their titles, these accusations many not come as all too surprising. Riot Games has a particularly troubled past when its comes to allegations of gender discrimination. Just last year, Riot Games settled a gender-based discrimination lawsuit for $100 million after being accused of fostering a workplace culture of sexual harassment and misconduct.
Riot also recently received backlash for allegedly firing an employee for calling out "fake trans allies" who apparently said it was okay to consider a trans person's pronouns as "optional." In any case, Riot Games has a spotty history when it comes to discrimination, and once again it's found itself in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.