Kikyo Mihata

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Worked on this girl for 9 months. Now this new music video comes out and she’s immensely popular, arguably one of the most popular characters in the LoL universe.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad she’s a huge hit, it’s super exciting to see so many people love the character design and the gameplay, and know that I contributed directly and significantly to the behind-the-scenes engineering that makes it all work. It’s validating.

But it’s also so fucking melancholy to know I did so much work and put in so much time for such a shitty company, run by shitty people, and the reward I got for it was unemployment. 

I threw a lot into this character. I cried at work. I started getting panic attacks, which I’ve never gotten before. I developed persistent heart palpitations from the daily overwhelming stress and had to go to the hospital (this is true, seriously.) I basically dropped all my friends outside of work. My manager (and his manager!) lied to me constantly to keep me working. They said I was doing a great job but to keep it up. Don’t worry, it’s going to turn out great, and it’ll all be worth it in the end – recognition, a raise, probably a promotion in short order. They promised me the world. When she was finally finished, I didn’t even get to go to the release party, they just walked me out. 

I remember a quote from my last day, it sticks out in my mind: “I know you realize this is really hard for me,” my manager said. Yes, in the end, when he awkwardly informed me I didn’t have my dream job anymore – or any job at all – and then stared back at my shell-shocked face, my thousand-yard stare, the only thing he felt was sorry for himself.

She launched with no major bugs and was considered a technical success. Doesn’t matter. Get the fuck out.

I don’t know how I feel. A weird sensation of pride and intense bitterness. I did a good job; at least, I think I did. Unfortunately, internal validation is the only kind I’m going to get.

Everyone reposting KDA should see this. Riot has successfully distracted everyone into forgetting their culture of sexism, exploitation, and toxicity mere months after it was all revealed.

Look, I get it. Akali is EXTREMELY my type. It’s obvious how much love and care was put into her development. But it makes me furious to see all the free advertising that Riot is getting from people who I thought would know better. 

And now? One of the people who is arguably responsible for all that free advertising? Who’s work is undoubtedly making Riot hundreds of thousands of dollars a day? Who was overworked to the point of near breaking? They get nothing. WORSE than the scant bit of credit that most devs can get in a big company like Riot. They got let go.

Fuck Riot Games.

(EDIT, four hours later: when I reblogged this post, OP’s blog was still active, and with a cursory look through their archive, it was pretty clear to me that they were telling the truth. 

It’s possible they had posted about Riot over the last year as part of some kind of long-game, but the earnestness of the posts didn’t seem to indicate any kind of deception. Who knows)

(Double EDIT: Someone compiled all the sources they had on OP to prove to a decent level of confidence that OP worked at Riot, TY)

Riot is one of the few companies I won’t refer anyone too, even though I have a huge list of industry contacts that also has Riot’s information on it.

Back when I worked at an MMO company, there were very few female CSRs or QA staff, let alone in the development cycle. However, somehow, that company blows Riot out of the water for employee culture, and respect of women. I -never- felt like my company treated women any different than men, at a peer level and at an executive level.

I can’t say I have ever heard the same thing of Riot. People who love bro culture and misogyny rate working there pretty high, due to having the privilege of being a bro (Riot does get 54% positive experience ratings on GlassDoor), however the negative experiences that have been coming out over the years (GlassDoor has that at 26%) generally are pretty upsetting, and make it clear that Riot (likely due to their C level staff) wants a certain flavour of game developer, that is thankfully dying out as more and more women and non-binary folks represent in the development world.

I was less than surprised to see this information about Riot using and abusing a developer. I think the only other company that is worse about that than Riot is large swaths of EA.

I find the design of K/DA amazing, even though I stopped playing League ages ago, and I am super disappointed that even a single person involved with the creation got shafted; I had briefly thought about logging back into LoL because of K/DA, but now? Nope.

Fucking solidarity against this shite in the industry.