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California state employment department says Riot Games has not been co-operating in gender discrimination investigation

California state employment department says Riot Games has not been co-operating in gender discrimination investigation

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has announced that it is filing an investigation enforcement suit into alleged gender discrimination at League of Legends maker Riot Games.

In a press release on its website, the state body says that Riot has refused to hand over the necessary information to see whether women are indeed paid less than men at the company. Surely not being open with such data is a sign of innocence!

“DFEH has broad authority to investigate potential violations of California’s civil rights laws
similar to grand jury proceedings,” DFEH director Kevin Kish said.

“When companies fail to cooperate voluntarily with our investigations, including with our investigative discovery, DFEH will exercise its right to seek assistance from the courts. Doing so ensures our investigations are informed by relevant evidence and completed without unnecessary delay.”

In a statement to Kotaku, the League of Legends maker said that it has been co-operating with DFEH, saying it is surprised to see the government body say it hasn't bee.

"We’ve been in active conversations with the DFEH since its inquiry began," a statement read.

"Investigations like this can arise when there have been allegations of workplace disparity and we’ve been cooperating in good faith with the DFEH to address its concerns. During this time, we’ve promptly responded to the DFEH’s requests, and have produced over 2,500 pages of documents and several thousand lines of pay data so far. We’ve also made several recent requests that the DFEH participate in a call with us to address their requests. To date, these requests have been unanswered, so we’re frankly disappointed to see the DFEH issue a press release alleging that we’ve been non-cooperative. We’re confident that we’ve made substantial progress on diversity, inclusion, and company culture, and look forward to continue demonstrating this to the DFEH."

This investigation follows a damning report last year into the working culture at Riot

 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.