Riot Will Keep Forced Arbitration Despite Employee Walkout

Just under two weeks after more than 150 Riot Games employees walked out on the job in harmless protest of the decisions made by the studio’s legal team in regards to the current lawsuits the company is facing. Today, Riot Games doubled down, stating that they won’t be changing any of their standings or policies. 

Does this mean the walkout failed? No. Not yet anyways. Riot has put out a plan to allow some change and movement on their forced arbitration rules within contracts, but it’s only on paper, and Riot is all talk. Employees that have been vocal in support of the changes are rightfully not super happy about the update from Riot Games. 

Part of the bad taste of the update is that it comes one day after the Riot Walkout protesters deadline. During the communication with the company, those participating in the walkout stated that if they did not make changes to the arbitration contract rules by yesterday, they would escalate their efforts in protesting. What they got, was placating at best, and a polical pacifier at worst. 

The blog post by Riot Games outlines a whole lot of nice sounding internal ideas and plans, but the part about current litigation is discouraging. 

“We’ve taken the time to clearly understand the range of perspectives and opinions related to our arbitration agreement, including those shared over the last three weeks. Ultimately, given the complexities of ongoing litigation, we will not change our employee agreements while in active litigation,” reads one paragraph. 

Worse yet, the announcement goes on to say that Riot “remains committed to having a firm answer around extending an opt-out to all Rioters.” Which means that they don't have an answer the publis, or their employees like right now. Instead, the blog post outlines other plans and “fixes” the company hopes to make good on in the next few months.

The group of protesters, called Rioters Against Forced Arbitration (or RAFA) shared Kotaku’s coverage of the Riot update with the comment “We believe leadership truly thinks they're doing the best thing for the company, but we disagree that their choices are the right ones. we'll share further action we are gonna take next week. stay tuned!”

With companies like Google and Apple removing forced arbitration from their employee contracts after recent employee outcry, it’s a wonder why Riot Games is being so hesitant to do the same. Actually, the reason is really clear, it’s just that no one really wants to say it out loud.