Riot Games reviews

-The company culture is a complete failure. It's mostly used in a weaponized way to win arguments. Challenging convention is not a good idea at Riot, as well as giving negative feedback. You will be labeled as a negative, toxic person, and you won't be having an easy time with your team. The senior leadership, especially, doesn't take negative feedback very well, and is extremely good at dancing around issues and using their political skills. Agree with the leadership (or who's in touch with it), and everything will be alright. Despite what the so-called "Riot Manifesto" says, titles count at Riot, and a lot of senior people leverage them (combined with Alpha behaviors, political games and back stabbing) to win arguments and keep their status. "Hungry&Humble", I've seen many high-level people making fun of other companies and talking about Riot superiority, despite Riot constantly failing at delivering a second game in the last decade. Egos of a lot of people are way too big. - Favoritism is a big issue in the company, a lot of people in the senior leadership are not qualified for their jobs and, despite their constant failures at what they're doing (and a lot of people under them having a hard time/losing their jobs), keep their positions because they're buddies with the owners. These people's accountability doesn't exist, which is very disrespectful for the other employees. - In 4 years I've experienced and seen a lot of discrimination towards sex, race and nationality, by a lot of people who never faced consequences for their actions. - Extreme corporate atmosphere, with a lot of bad politics happening. - Being at Riot feels like being in a cult. Orientation ("De-Newbiefication" in the Riot language) is basically a full week of indoctrination. You're forced to wear an embarassing hat and, during one of the classes, you're asked to share a painful experience, in which you felt vulnerable (exactly like a lot of cults do). A lot of company gatherings in which a lot of hyperbolic (unrealistic, in reality), things about the company are said, to an audience wearing Riot clothes. Questioning stuff that Riot does (the game, esports, etc.) is perceived extremely negatively. - If you're planning on building a portfolio, go somewhere else. Riot moves slowly, the amount of work and the quality of it will be not up to par with the current industry standards.

Poor leadership experience at the top. League was a huge hit at the time and was more or less an indie startup. The same guys who were the interns, artists, engineers of league early seasons, mediocre by today's standards, are managing teams without actual experience to back it up. They're either painfully aware of this or fooling themselves. Both create horrible paths of toxicity, where vocal employees are quickly exited or silenced, or belittled. Complete dead weight who take credit as much as possible, shut anything down that's not their initiative, leave early, and are the loudest voice in the room. It's extremely easy to take credit for someone else's work due to the culture of 'default to trust'. Pretty easy to push that if you're outright lying about what value you provide. What makes a leader at Riot isn't shipping product or creating, it's if they have a checkmark by their name that says if they took Riot leadership training or not. Or if they're friends with another leader. God help them if Riot ever has layoffs because they'll have a huge wakeup call if they ever go to another studio. If they could trick said company's HR first I guess. Another odd thing is that failure is rewarded more the higher up you go. A leader who tanked two teams wasn't fired but only 'downgraded' to yet another department(probably with the same pay). Mostly due to him being friends with the owner. Meanwhile core employees quickly get exited or fired, sometimes to the detriment to the team they're on, if they step slightly out of Riot culture or suggest anything that could be seen as unsavory. It really creates an odd double culture of fun and games, and keeping your head down and just do exactly what leadership says. Riot can be a great place. The talent they've hired is outstanding. They need to REALLY trim the fat because there's a large amount of useless running amok in leadership roles. Maybe you guys should have yet another meeting to talk about it? I think there's change brewing but it'll be too late to even mean anything unless the actual leadership wake the hell up and actually do something instead of yet another overly complicated power point presentation.