Riot Games said the third party investigation they launched on CEO Nicolo Laurent found “no evidence” of wrongdoing, and its own special committee recommends that no action be taken against him. The investigation was initiated by Riot Games after a lawsuit was filed against Laurent and the company in January, alleging that he had harassed an employee and that Riot Games had fired her when she complained. The process is ongoing.
The investigation into Laurent’s conduct was carried out by outside law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP, who presented his findings to a special three-person committee at Riot Games. The special committee, as reported by the Washington Post, consisted of Riot Games board member Youngme Moon and two level C executives from Riot Games owner Tencent.
Riot Games today issued a statement from the special committee, which states that they “act independently of the administration” and analyze the results of the investigations “impartially”. It would be difficult to believe these statements from any company, and paying an outsourced law firm does not change that. We also have no way of knowing what the Seyfarth Shaw investigation involved.
The lawsuit against Riot Games and Laurent was filed by former executive assistant Sharon O’Donnell, who was dismissed from her position at Riot Games in July 2020. As reported by Vice last month, the lawsuit alleges that Laurent asked for O’Donnell to “‘come’ at his house while his wife was away”, asked him to travel with him outside of work, and told him to be more feminine and be careful with his tone.
O’Donnell’s lawsuit alleges that she complained about Laurent’s behavior to the HR department at Riot Games and that her dismissal was related to those complaints. Riot Games addressed this in a statement to Vice last month, saying, “The claimant was fired from the company more than seven months ago based on a number of well-documented complaints from a variety of people. Any suggestions otherwise are simply untrue. . ”
Today’s statement from Riot’s special committee says that after analyzing the results of the third party investigation, they “concluded that there was no evidence that Laurent harassed, discriminated against or retaliated against the plaintiff” and “No action should be taken against Laurent.”
Riot also published a short letter alongside a statement by Laurent himself, both available on the same link. Laurent, who continued to serve as CEO while under investigation, notes in his statement that the company is “exploring legal options”. Riot filed a lawsuit with the Los Angeles County Superior Court the same day, asking to speed up legal proceedings and take the case to arbitration.
In addition to the obvious difficulty of investigating impartially – even if you hire an outside company – Riot lacks credibility in this matter due to previous allegations of sexism in the workplace, which were first detailed in an extensive 2018 report by Kotaku. They remain involved in legal proceedings on the matter until now. In 2019, the Riot Games team left their Los Angeles studio in protest against the company’s use of “forced arbitration” in resolving sexual harassment complaints. Earlier this week, Alienware canceled a League Of Legends sponsorship deal ten months earlier, with anonymous sources telling Dot Esports that Alienware cited concerns about the company’s public image.