Riot Games says fixing studio culture is ‘top priority’ after extensive reports of workplace harassment

League of Legends developer Riot Games has responded to allegations of toxic workplace culture with an extensive apology this morning, a move that acknowledges the massive and vocal criticism from current and existing employees that erupted following an investigation from Kotaku earlier this month. The apology comes one day after former employee and software developer Barry Hawkins posted a personal blog post, one of many to emerge in the past three weeks, outlining why he left the company after attempting to address sexism at Riot.

The Kotaku report highlighted, in detail, how Riot co-founders, executives, and employees fostered a sexist workplace culture that kept women from leadership roles, pushed out talented developers and artists, and aided the pervasive gender imbalance in the game industry and the e-sport community in which League of Legends reigns supreme. Hawkins’ post also described the company’s widespread use of rape jokes to describe its recruiting process, including a “no doesn’t necessarily mean no” slogan.

“To Rioters, contractors, former Rioters, and past contractors: we’re sorry,” reads the post. “We’re sorry that Riot hasn’t always been — or wasn’t — the place we promised you. And we’re sorry it took so long for us to hear you. In the days, weeks, months, years to come, we’re going to make Riot a place we can all be proud of.”

The company says it will undergo extensive internal evaluations to recalibrate everything from how it defines the word “gamer” and what its manifesto means to its complaint and harassment investigations process, recruiting, employee training, and diversity and inclusion efforts. This isn’t the first statement Riot Games has issued on the matter — the company gave statements to Kotaku and other outlets in the aftermath of the initial report — but it is the most thorough and definitive apology since the saga began.

League of Legends, a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game, became one of the most popular games in the world over the course of the last decade, catapulting Riot Games into the upper echelon of game studios. It now employs more than 2,500 employees in 24 offices around the world and enjoys the massive financial coffers of China’s Tencent, which fully acquired the company in 2015. Riot not only runs League of Legends, which generated more than $2 billion last year, but it also owns and operates the extensive global e-sports competitions around the game with strict control over licensing, broadcasting, and live event production.

Despite the massive success, current and former employees have criticized the company’s overall failure to foster a more mature workplace culture and outgrow its male-dominated startup beginnings. Following Kotaku’s report on August 7th, numerous female game developers and industry employees opened up about their experiences at Riot and elsewhere, and the conversation about Riot’s toxic culture only intensified:

It’s unclear whether Hawkins’ post yesterday prompted Riot leadership to issue a more definitive response. It is likely, however, that the company anticipated even more stories of toxic and sexist workplace occurrences within Riot to come out unless company leadership acknowledged the situation more definitively. In its list of apologies, Riot included players and prospective new employees, signaling that it sees these accounts and its diminishing reputation as a leader in the games industry as potentially having a negative impact on its bottom line and its ability to hire new talent.

“We’ve always believed that Riot should be the home for the very best talent in gaming,” the post says in conclusion. “It’s clear we’ve fallen short of that goal. But we’ve never backed down from a challenge before and we don’t plan to start now.”