The end of the 2019 season marked a very successful year for Riot Games and League of Legends, as they celebrated the 10th anniversary of the launch of the game by breaking a series of tournament records, as well as taking home countless prestigious awards.
But behind the glamour of the awards, there are still a lot of hidden corners that the gaming community has been forced to witness and face over the past year, and these scandal stories have, in part, tarnished the image of esports.
Riot Games was accused by employees of sex discrimination and sexual harassment within the company
The incident broke out in August 2018, when a number of former Riot Games employees came forward to accuse female victims of internal discrimination. One of these witnesses even made allegations of sexual harassment by male colleagues.
Despite the placating statements from Riot, a series of other female employees also stood up and charged with similar indictments, which forced the US government to resolve.
The trial lasted for nearly a year and was only temporarily closed in early December when Riot Games agreed to pay a large sum of money to prove its seriousness in changing and improving culture The office is becoming extremely bad in the public eye.
According to the Associated Press, Riot Games, based in Los Angeles (USA), will compensate about 1,000 female employees who have been working at the company for the past 5 years.
This event, though not causing too much impact on the gaming community, but has become a major problem for society, when gender discrimination still exists even in an ideal working environment as civilized and most advanced as Riot Games – the world’s leading gaming company. And no wonder, when Riot Games became a thorn in the eyes of community activists as well as a part of American society.
But anyway, it’s important that Riot is showing a positive change.
cvMax is accused of player violence and the truth behind the scandals of Griffin as well as Riot Games Korean
GRF has entered the history of professional LoL for their bad luck when setting up 3 consecutive runner-up achievements in the LCK. However, this team also made the whole esports community wobble when constantly entangled in scandals.
In parallel with the incident related to Kanavi’s exploitation contract, Griffin was also involved in the scandal related to cvMax – The coach was fired by this team right before the World Championship in 2019. Initially stemming from internal conflicts, cvMax is said to disagree with a number of players (Sword), and was fired.
However, things went further when Sword and some other Griffin characters spoke out against cvMax, at the same time accusing the coach of violence against the player, in order to legalize his decision to fire him.
cvMax was accused of violent acts with Chovy, but Griffin members refused to publish evidence in public, while Chovy himself was extremely happy to reunite with the cvMax at DragonX, causing The criticism was even more intense.
The anger of the gaming community also spread to the Riot Games Korean, after a permanent ban on cvMax without any concrete evidence of violence. A former Korean Riot employee then tacitly revealed a faction within the organization, referring to the shady punishment that cvMax had to receive as a way to make him “shut up” and unable to reveal any more scandals.
Currently, cvMax’s sentence has been temporarily delayed, and the cvMax will continue to lead DragonX in the LCK Spring 2020, but the case has not stopped.
Griffin was exposed about slave contracts with Kanavi, shocked the Korean government
In fact, it was cvMax who denounced the slave contract that Griffin forced former player Kanavi to comply with. The contract included extremely unfavourable terms, exploited the labour of Kanavi, and violated the minimum rules of a professional esports contract. It can be said that the controversy with cvMax, Griffin has suffered more severe consequences than they imagined.
The Kanavi incident is not only a Griffin story, but it also exposes the embarrassing realities behind the glamour of Korean esports. The gaming community agreed that Kanavi was not the only case of injustice, and this Korean esports was not professional either.
This scandal caused Cho Gyu-Nam – Griffin’s CEO to resign, but not to stop there, many Korean parliamentarians and deputies also joined in demanding to expand the investigate on similar issues.
If more cases like Kanavi were revealed, there would be no doubt that the Korean League of Legends would be in an unprecedented crisis of confidence, and it could even bring about the collapse of Esports culture capital is growing in this country.
You must log in to post a comment.