Riot Games reviews

4.0

75% would recommend to a friend

(1,042 total reviews)
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Dylan Jadeja

68% approve of CEO

54% positive business outlook

Riot Games has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,042 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Riot Games employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
1.0
Nov 3, 2015
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

League of Legends is a cool product to work on

Cons

Rampant bullying and harassment: - Bullies hired and kept on teams, and allowed to harass good talented workers constantly, causing turnover and lost careers - Harassment denied and blamed on the victim because the manager is also a bully - Very low morale and trust levels that destroys learning, communication and teamwork because of toxic work environment caused by harassment, immaturity and disrespect - Bad team players (bullies) being unfairly favored and good talented respectful team players being disrespected, unappreciated and left out - A system that breeds "Bully" mentality. To survive is to become a bully or leave. Extremely unfair favoritism & egos: - Only a select few spoiled people with huge egos get clout or respect for their achievements - Most very talented experienced high achieving workers constantly get overlooked and ignored for their hard work and achievements, even when they do better than the "favorite people" - Unfair favoritism causing ignored people to overwork themselves for a false assumption that they can be appreciated for their achievements like the "favorite people". It never happens, even when they have done better than the "favorite people" - Favored spoiled egotistical workers forcing their way on the rest of the team, stifling the other talented workers, and harming final products and team morale because of their ego Very bad management: - Inexperienced, immature, lazy managers that blame their team when they, the manager, won't even manage or train the team - Managers that expect the team to manage itself even when the manager has not trained them to have the skills to do so - Managers that have poor communication and are very disorganized - Managers that are not flexible, do not listen to the workers, and have big egos - Managers that are condescending and micromanaging of their workers, and do not listen to or utilize the experience, talent and knowledge of the workers. - Managers that ruin the morale of the team, because they are bad with people and do not know how to encourage and empower their workers. They instead make workers feel worthless and like they are never good enough. - Managers that promote unfair favoritism and unrealistic expectations on the team - Managers that are not team players Overdone, immature, clique-like, cult-like culture that kills good talented workers: - The overbearing culture causes the workers to not be free to be themselves or even human, forcing unrealistic conformity, stifles personal identity, and brainwashes the workers (you are just a number who is undeserving) - If you don't perfectly conform to the immature, clique-like, cult-like group, then you will quickly be left out and unappreciated for your hard work, talent and achievements, and even worse, struggle to keep your job - Individuality is discouraged, and human needs like appreciation, encouragement, and being listened to, is close to non-existent No real opportunities: - Constant overworking and extreme effort to over achieve, only to earn little to nothing in the form of promotions or clout over a long period of time, while other "favorite people" constantly get more and more promotions and clout - Managers giving unclear guidelines for career development and changing guidelines randomly Unequal treatment of women: - Women are very outnumbered on all teams, and their unique and needed opinions are constantly overlooked because there are too many males and male opinions - Over a long period of time, the female worker is prone to feel like she has to be like a male to fit in and achieve - Women remain misunderstood and unappreciated because there are not enough of them - Riot swag and gifts are often tailored for males, making them useless for women - There is no real equal opportunity help for minority groups like women at riot, other than Riot Dames (but it doesn't help very much) Extremely disorganized: - a completely disorganized and overdone product feedback system that waists time and energy, exhausts, discourages and over stresses the workers and ruins the products - no cubicles or walls between desks. The open floor plan causes even more stress, disorganization, and lack of productivity - extreme disorganization causing never ending problems that cause more problems, and nothing is ever solved - no real style guides or goals for products, causing random changing opinions to ruin products and frustrate teams - excessive competition caused by lack of organization that causes constant instability and stress Extremely unhealthy levels of Stress: - Overbearing culture, feedback system, bullying, unrealistic expectations and disorganization cause excruciating levels of stress, that overflows to the weekends and after work - Excessive overworking of new workers, causing extensive overtime for months, causing physical fatigue, sickness and extreme lack of sleep over long periods of time - Constant lack of appreciation of talented hard workers causing them to over-stress over unrealistic expectations and unattainable goals - Job causing extreme anxiety, stress and depression at almost all times

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Riot Games Response
10y
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, though it's troubling to hear this feedback and not an experience we would want anyone at Riot to have. I hope you would be open to sharing any specifics with me or another Rioter from our Talent team who can look into any of the areas you mention. If this is something you would be open to, I would like to take the opportunity to hear your feedback to help address any issues that you raise. You can contact me at cmoore@riotgames.com and I look forward to learning more about your experience. Christa Moore
1.0
Dec 6, 2019
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

My perspective is the sum of my personal experiences at Riot over 4.5 years there as a manager. I left on my own accord and on good terms. Your experience may be entirely different. Choose your adventure wisely. - The executive team and the entire company has really focused heavily on changing Riot for the better when it comes to diversity and inclusion, and it definitely shows. (I don't think this would have been the case though unless Kotaku broke the article about it. Leadership at Riot is entrenched.) - Really fun campus to work at (if you work in Los Angeles) - There are some of the most amazing individuals I have ever met and worked with there. - Working on games is fun. - You will grow a lot at Riot. - Riot pays well. - Fully subsidized coffee and food! - A lot of opportunities to speak directly to the company leadership if you are comfortable asking questions in front of the entire company. - Play games at work is fun. - Great open schedule with as much time off as you want.

Cons

- The smart but inexperienced often get put in charge (if they're popular "yes" types) of the seasoned experienced people and subject matter experts, which leads to infinite cycles of grey hairs, screaming into the void, and tears. - Raising real concerns about issues when it directly calls into question decisions leaders make is a big no no. Quickest path to nowhere at Riot on most teams. - Riot can be pretty clique-y. - “Business Unit Leaders” / departmental heads battle with one another constantly and the CEO is too new and inexperienced to make calls to rectify problems. - Prepare yourself for lots of politics. - Finding anything (assets, knowledge, etc...) in the company requires Sherlock Holmes level investigative techniques. - A group of original people who started at Riot with minimal outside experience have been promoted to director/VP levels - They are pretty much immune to being fired, short of being the subject of an expose by a journalist. They are entrenched. Some of them are bullies. Some of them have no social skills. Some of them are grossly incompetent people who only surround themselves with "yes" people. Some of them create or have created highly toxic workplaces. "good ol boys club" mentality is still in full swing at Riot, even if they're not sexually harassing people anymore. - Riot doesn't do a great job at aligning goals from the front lines up to the CEO. There is no OKR type system, so things can get really messy and confusing. - The "product" and "delivery" disciplines are in charge of everything, yet they are the most unorganized group at the company. - HR/Talent is a dysfunctional organization. They are not your friend and they are not invested in YOU as an employee. They are purely there to reduce liability for Riot. They operate in total secrecy. They report to a department leader, not to someone in charge of HR which is an inherent conflict of interest. Don't trust them. - Culturally, you will be expected to “be positive”. It reminds me a lot of Theranos or the Fyre festival. (Watch those documentaries, they're good!). This comes at the expense of leaders finding out what’s really wrong with products or teams and doing things about it. Or if they know, they don't care to change. The majority of the time, most concerns or problems have the feeling of being “swept under the rug”. - If a leader is at fault, problems are usually not addressed without anything short of a public outcry. This often creates a secret toxic environment you should be very aware of. A lot of leaders within Riot want "Yes" people, not people who challenge their thinking or raise issues. If you want an example of this, Riot's sexual harassment culture didn't change until a string of Kotaku articles embarrassed leadership publicly enough for them to change things. This is endemic to Riot's senior leadership across so many fronts, its hard to count. - Steer clear of IPC (IP Creative, formerly known as CDev and IPSD - they've had to re-brand themselves several times. Make of that what you will.) They’re completely dysfunctional, have incompetent and abusive leaders, and will cause you a lot of pain. You will walk away with serious scar tissue if you work there. Their reputation is infamous within the company. - Steer clear of international publishing. It's a huge mess. There is constant infighting between all of the departmental leaders across Riot.

2.0
Nov 20, 2018
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Some of the best talent you’ll work with in the industry, amazing health insurance, and open PTO.

Cons

Riot hires talented individuals and fails to let them do their jobs. They discriminate against women and damage careers. Riot also terminates people when they speak out against incompetent management, and they have a track record of using the latter against employees by calling out “performance issues” with no documentation. If employees communicate feeling unsafe to HR (“Talent”), Talent will do whatever they can to out you. No one is “safe” and they’ll work hard to push you out.

Viewing 34 - 36 of 1,042 Reviews

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