Current and former women employees sue Riot Games, a video game company, claim harassment

Two women have sued the Los Angeles company behind the world's most popular online video game, claiming sexual harassment, unequal pay and gender-based discrimination.

The complaint, filed Monday, details an alleged "bro culture" at Riot Games Inc., where, the plaintiffs claim, senior leadership favors men and encourages them to engage in inappropriate conduct while refusing to hold themselves and other employees accountable when people complained. The lawsuit was filed four months after several media reports outlined allegations by current and former company employees.

A Riot Games spokesperson would not comment Wednesday on pending litigation but said, "We remain committed to a deep and comprehensive evolution of our culture to ensure Riot is a place where all Rioters thrive."

"Rather than going after the leaders who initiated the misconduct, they went after a lot of the allies, and they tried to insulate the bad actors as much as possible," said plaintiffs' attorney Tyler Vanderpool of Rosen Saba LLP. "It largely seems like they're putting up a thinly veiled cover on the misconduct alleged."

Harassment alleged in the complaint includes an ongoing email chain of "Riot Games' hottest women employees," unsolicited pictures of male genitalia and crude humor concerning jokes about sex, rape and torture.

A former employee and name plaintiff Jessica Negron, who worked at the company from 2015 to 2017, said she counted the word "dick" used more than 500 times by male employees in a month, according to the complaint. The suit also detailed an alleged meeting with co-founder Brandon Beck in which the plaintiffs quoted him as suggesting, "No doesn't necessarily mean no" as the company slogan.

Riot Games hired Seyfarth Shaw LLP to investigate the allegations of misconduct after they were initially reported in August. The firm's findings were inconclusive and "no action was taken against any of the bad actors," according to the complaint.

The suit alleges violations of the state's Equal Pay Act and Unfair Competition Law, among other claims, and seeks wages lost to discrimination, punitive damages and injunctive relief. McCracken v. Riot Games Inc., 18STCV03957 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 6, 2018).

Plaintiffs' attorneys blamed Riot Games' senior leadership for the alleged harassment and retaliation as well as what they said was an absence of company policies preventing such misconduct.

Plaintiff Melanie McCracken, a current employee, said she requested a transfer to a department with better upward mobility because her supervisor allegedly did not hire women to fill senior employment positions. McCracken said she feared retaliation for transferring and complained to human resources, which subsequently informed McCracken's boss about the complaint, she alleges.

McCracken claimed she was then squeezed out of her department after Chief Operating Officer Scott Gelb accused her of sharing compromising photographs of him on a business trip to Shanghai she did not attend, according to the complaint. She said she was eventually moved to another building and isolated from her team.

Eve Wagner of Sauer & Wagner LLP said Riot Games has a fraternity-esque culture that is symptomatic of an industry that she said places young employees in leadership positions who do not understand the significance of culture to worker morale and productivity. Wagner is former chair of the Beverly Hills Bar Association's labor and employment division.

"It's like you come out of college, you start a company and you just sort of carry on the way that you were when you were young," she said. "There are no grownups in the room."

There has been an uptick in plaintiffs bringing gender discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and Wagner expects there to be even more following the passage of bills aimed at addressing inappropriate workplace conduct signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown this past legislative session.

The labor attorney emphasized SB 1300 in particular, which will make summary judgment in sexual harassment suits "nearly impossible" to grant.