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Riot Games offers female employees $10 million in settlement
Money to be split among roughly 1,000 female workers from 2014 on.
Riot Games offers female employees $10 million in settlement | Ars Te…
archived 4 Dec 2019 09:28:05 UTC
Riot Games offers female employees $10 million in settlement
Money to be split among roughly 1,000 female workers from 2014 on.
KYLE ORLAND - 12/3/2019, 4:06 PM
Back in August, League of Legends maker Riot announced an out-of-court settlement to deal with a number of class-action lawsuits surrounding widespread allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, and unequal pay at the company. A proposed settlement document filed Monday offers details of that settlement's particulars, including a $10 million fund to compensate the company's female employees.
If the mediated proposal is approved by a judge, all current and former female Riot employees who were at the company at any point since November 2014 would be eligible for compensation, amounting to approximately 1,000 women. Those employees would actually split about $6.2 million, after attorneys' fees and other costs are taken into account. But that still means "no Class Member will receive less than $500 and most Class Members will receive at least $5,000," according to the court documents, with specific payouts depending on each employee's tenure and work status.
The proposed settlement document once again summarizes the case against Riot, which was accused of paying women less than similarly situated men, placing women in lower-paying job roles, passing women up for promotions over similarly situated men, and "creating, encouraging and maintaining a work environment that exposes its female employees to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation on the basis of their gender or sex."
But the settlement also acknowledges "remediation efforts" that Riot made before a lawsuit was ever filed over these issues. Those include "revising its interview and recruiting process to ensure fairness, improving job descriptions and titles to increase transparency, creating an anonymous intake hotline for employees to report discrimination issues, and rolling out mandatory anti-bias training, among other things."
"We are pleased to share that we’ve finalized the proposed settlement agreement to resolve the class action case against Riot, and settlement paperwork has now been filed by plaintiffs’ counsel," Riot said in a public statement. "While this is another important step in our journey, it is important to note that the settlement agreement is preliminary and is subject to the Court’s oversight and approval. We look forward to the final resolution of this case and continuing on our path forward."
The proposed settlement comes as the Tencent-owned Riot embarks on major expansion plans beyond its core League of Legends business. Those plans include a competitive card game, a tactical shooter, a fighting game, a third-person action game, and an animated series set in the LoLuniverse.
