League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that it’s settled a class action lawsuit alleging “gender discrimination in pay and promotion, sexual harassment, and retaliation against women working at” the company.
The lawsuit was filed last year, following a Kotaku investigation into systemic sexism at Riot, and was just one of numerous gender discrimination lawsuits faced by the company. Events came to a very public head in May when over 150 Riot employees staged a walkout to protest news that Riot’s attorney was attempting to prevent two of those lawsuits from progressing by insisting that those involved waived their rights to sue under the terms of their employment contracts.
In a statement released today, the company said, “We made a commitment to [employees] that we would be willing to take the steps necessary to build trust and to demonstrate that we’re serious about Riot evolving into an excellent place to work for all Rioters. Under these circumstances, we’ve had to look critically at our litigation approach to the class action lawsuit.” Although it “believed that we had a strong position to litigate, we realised that in the long run, doing what is best for both Riot and Rioters was our ideal outcome.”
“Therefore, rather than entrench ourselves and continue to litigate, we chose to pivot and try to take an approach that we believe best demonstrates our commitment to owning our past, and to healing the company so that we can move forward together,” Riot wrote.