Last Monday, many Rioters shared their perspectives on arbitration, issues they’ve experienced at Riot, and changes they hope to see. Many also showed their deep love for Riot and their desire to make Riot better. The Rioter walkout was an important moment in our company’s transformation, and it reaffirmed our commitment to keep fighting to make this the company we believe it can be.
We’ve taken the time to clearly understand the range of perspectives and opinions related to our arbitration agreement, including those shared over the last three weeks. Ultimately, given the complexities of ongoing litigation, we will not change our employee agreements while in active litigation. We know not everyone agrees with this decision, but we also know everyone does want Riot to continue to improve. We remain committed to having a firm answer around extending an opt-out to all Rioters when active litigation concludes. Everything we’ve heard will impact our discussions when we revisit arbitration and we hope to have an answer that will be satisfying to everyone. At a minimum, we will give new Rioters the option to opt out of arbitration on individual sexual harassment claims.
Arbitration was just one topic that Rioters spoke about last week, but there are many other D&I (diversity and inclusion) work streams in progress and in the planning stages. Last week’s walkout and related discussions proves that we’re stronger when we leverage the diverse viewpoints of all of Riot; Rioters are passionate and to meet our goals as one team, we need to channel that passion into productive dialogue that accelerate progress and drive change—or at a minimum, mutual understanding.
So, to facilitate continued discussions and to put concerned Rioters at the table with the leaders directing operational change, we’re taking the following actions:
We are creating a new forum called the D&I Rioters Council. Led by Angela, the goal is to leverage a group of engaged, thoughtful Rioters from teams across the company to participate in formal discussions on D&I. This will become a proactive approach to share perspectives, create change, and identify barriers and opportunities to move us forward in D&I and culture.
We have also invited a diverse group of Rioters to participate in reviewing aspects of our Code of Conduct where they have concerns. Rather than bringing the new code of conduct to Rioters as a finished product, we want representatives of Riot involved in the process, much in the way we drafted our values last year (though we’ll admit that to hit our 30 day goal on this project we’re going to be limited in who we include in this process).
We are also on track to meet our 30-60-90 day goals that we shared during the first week of May, which include revamping our recruitment process, accelerating our D&I-focused training programs across all levels of Riot, and creating a D&I scorecard that will keep us accountable for the change we have pledged to Rioters, players, partners, and fans. While we’ve already made many changes over the last nine months (and you can learn more about the progress made to-date here, as well as in the graphic below), this is an ongoing evolution, and there are certainly more updates to come.
