《英雄聯盟》 Kotaku報導：Riot Game裡的職場性別歧視

在 Kotaku 網站上的一份近萬字的專訪報導裡透露出，作為市面上最受歡迎的 MOBA 遊戲《英雄聯盟》背後的開發公司 Riot Game （拳頭社），可能存在著職場性別歧視問題。不只女性，也有男性也員工提到認為自己被騷擾，被訪談的員工們敘述對這件事情的看法，不論是正面或是反面的意見都有。

×下文為翻譯由 Kotaku 所報導之部分內容，不代表本站立場

化名為 Lacy 的前女性員工表示「離開公司的部分原因是她親身經歷過性別歧視，比如我的男性上級會暗示我的職位是因為我的外表，或是每隔幾個月就在會議中公開評論我在工作時我的家人是否會想念我？甚至我做了一次測試，我請求一位男性同事在我提出某計畫後的一週也提及一樣的想法，看看會有什麼結果？起初他很懷疑但我依舊堅持要測試。瞧？果不其然，整個會議室替他歡呼，他的眼裡含著淚水、臉跟甜菜根一樣紅。」

Riot Game 成立於 2006 年，2013 年被評為 Business Insider 的 25 家最佳科技公司之一，2015年其年收入高達 16 億美元。作為一個資金如此雄厚的科技公司，辦公總部也擁有了健身房、咖啡廳、免費供應食物的自助餐廳等設施，那些「無法適應 Riot 兄弟文化」的女性表示，這些完善的設施有助於讓她們忍受這麼長的時間，這 28 名員工大多數人都是匿名發言，因為他們擔心自己未來在遊戲業的職涯，也擔心《英雄聯盟》的狂粉會因為這些言論而對他們進行報復攻擊，但也有現職員工在訪談紀錄中表示，有些女性職員說她們在 Riot 時並沒有遭遇過性別歧視。

[Hiring a woman into a leadership position proved impossible for Lacy, she said, and she left the company in part because of the sexism she’d personally experienced. She said her direct manager would ask her if it was hard working at Riot being so cute. Sometimes, she said, he’d imply that her position was a direct result of her appearance. Every few months, she said, a male boss of hers would comment in public meetings about how her kids and husband must really miss her while she was at work.
One day, Lacy conducted an experiment: After an idea she really believed in fell flat during a meeting, she asked a male colleague to present the same idea to the same group of people days later. He was skeptical, but she insisted that he give it a shot. “Lo and behold, the week after that, [he] went in, presented exactly as I did and the whole room was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ [His] face turned beet red and he had tears in his eyes,” said Lacy. “They just didn’t respect women.”

Riot Games, founded in 2006, has become one of the biggest companies in gaming on the back of its sole release, League of Legends, which had 100 million monthly players in 2016. With 2,500 employees across 20 offices, Riot is a powerhouse. In 2013, Riot was named one of Business Insider’s 25 best tech companies to work for. Two years later, it made $1.6 billion in revenue. Its Los Angeles campus is cushy in the way you’d expect a money-bloated tech company’s offices to be. It’s got a gym, a coffee shop, a cafeteria with free food, a LAN cafe. Employees often stay late to grind out competitive skill points in League of Legends with their Riot family and are communicating on Slack well into the night. Women who don’t fit in with Riot’s “bro culture”—a term I heard from over a half dozen sources while reporting this story—say these amenities help make the job bearable for only so long.]

在我們（Kotaku）開始採訪這篇報導的五個月後，Riot 在其網站上新增了一個頁面，上頭寫著「我們積極執行對歧視/騷擾的零容忍政策，我們的領導人身體力行了這項承諾並且加強團隊實施這點政策，這一點十分重要」。根據 Wayback Machine 的說法，這個頁面在五月下旬的時候上架，但是 Riot代表被問到這個問題時則表示「公司的零容忍政策（包含對遊戲玩家）早已在 4 月時就交給員工，特別是在 Kotaku 開始調查之前。」（Kotaku 在去年 12 月開始採訪，今年五月中旬接觸 Riot 的領導者）。

[Five months after we started reporting for this article, days after Riot apparently learned about it, the company added a “diversity and inclusion” page on its website that says, “We aggressively enforce a zero tolerance policy on discrimination, harassment, and general toxicity. It is incredibly important that our leaders embody this commitment, and reinforce this expectation across their teams.” The page was added in late May, according to the Wayback Machine, but when asked, a Riot representative said the company’s “roadmap” for diversity and inclusion initiatives, including a public-facing definition of “gamer,” was presented to Riot staff as early as April, “notably well before Kotaku

began its inquiries.” (Kotaku began its inquires in December of last year, and reached out to Riot leadership mid-May.)]。

但在那裡工作過的女性員工表示「沒有什麼能比真相更真實」，在這個報導過程中，我們（Kotaku）發現許多前 Riot 員工因為在他們離開公司前簽署的「非貶低協議」而不願意被記載談論內容。其中有人說，在與 Riot 的人力資源團隊討論他們在公司的經歷之後，收到了遣散費。

Riot 發表了一個冗長的聲明，簡而言之， Riot 認為我們（Kotaku）在本文中所描述的與該公司文化「明顯相反」。Riot 表示「當我們遇到任何歧視、騷擾、報復、欺凌等行為時，我們會深入了解、評估、解決，我們對以上事項都採取零容忍措施。」，但在我們（Kotaku）的訪談過程中，有三位女性表示他們曾經正在接受升職培訓時，都持續工作到突然有天男性員工取代她們。採訪的員工中有部分（男/女性皆有）都描述到從老闆或同事那裡接收到了「不請自來也不想接受」的男性生殖器照片，其中一名前任男性員工更表示「某高階男性主管經常抓住我的生殖器，這種“兄弟文化”在關上門之後更加的明顯，也傷害了男性」。- (Source: Kotaku)

[The page also says, “There is no cookie cutter template for what a Rioter looks like.” But women who have worked there said that nothing could be further from the truth.

Over the course of reporting this story, we found that many former Riot employees were restricted from talking on the record because of non-disparagement agreements they signed before leaving the company. Some say they received severance after speaking to Riot’s “talent” team—what the company calls its human resources team—about their experiences at the company.
When contacted by Kotaku for comment on the details in this story, Riot sent over a lengthy statement, which we’ve quoted throughout this story. In short, the company said that the anecdotes described in this article are “explicitly opposite” to its culture. “When we encounter any contrary behaviors, we dig in to understand, evaluate, and address,” the company said. “We have a zero tolerance policy on discrimination, harassment, retaliation, bullying, and general toxicity.”

Among the people we spoke to, three women described being groomed for promotions, and doing jobs above their title and pay grade, until men were suddenly brought in to replace them. Both male and female sources have described seeing unsolicited and unwelcome pictures of male genitalia from bosses or colleagues.]

（圖片來源：kotaku.com）

Riot 的高層設計師之一 Kimberly 擁有電腦科學博士學位，從事遊戲工作已有 20 年，她告訴我們（Kotaku）不需要問她是否是一名死忠遊戲玩家。當我們（Kotaku）告訴她關於一些受訪者面試時遭到刁難時，她表示「我沒有遇到這些事情（指對女性求職者特別針對的面試過程或問題）」但仍然表示他正在努力改善面試過程，「如果情況確實是如此，那我會非常難過。當然，我從來沒有在同事中看到過那種行為，也沒有任何一次面試是如此進行的（指對女性較為針對）。」

Riot 的平台負責人，23 位高級領導團隊中的唯一女性，同時也是最高職位女性的 Oksana Kubushyna 解釋「通常男性傾向于過度誇張，女性則是傾向低估自己」，但在職位的描述中，招聘領導人刪除了「忍者」這個詞（如：招聘 Code Ninja），是因為 Roit 的老鳥們認為這可能會威脅或是阻止到女性面試者。- (Source: Kotaku)

[Kimberly Voll, a senior technical designer at Riot who has a PhD in computer science and has worked in gaming for 20 years, told me that Riot “didn’t need to” ask whether she was a hardcore gamer. “I’m a hardcore gamer. I’ve been playing games since the 70s,” she said. Voll, who has sat on a lot of panels interviewing potential employees, says she’s never encountered what looks like hyper-targeted questioning toward female candidates, but still says she’s working to improve the interviewing process generally. “That would make me really sad if that were the case,” she said when I described some of the interview scenarios that other sources told me they’d experienced. “Certainly I’ve never seen that kind of behavior among my coworkers and none of the interviews I’ve conducted.”

Oksana Kubushyna is Riot’s head of platform and the most senior woman at Riot—the only woman in Riot’s 23-person senior leadership team until June, 2018, when Laura DeYoung became head of art. Kubushyna told me that Riot began paying more attention to diversity and inclusion in its hiring process about nine months ago. In job descriptions, hiring leaders removed the word “ninja”—as in “code ninja”—because seniors at Riot believed it might intimidate or deter female candidates.]

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該報導採訪了 28 名現任/已離職的 Riot Game 員工關於在職場中遭遇到的性別歧視言論，採訪的員工中有男性也有女性，其中一位員工直稱這是一個不尊重女性的地方，但也有員工表示從未發生過這種事，如果對這項議題有興趣的讀者們可以到原文深入了解，而 Riot 也在稍早做出了回應，有興趣的讀者們也可以點這裡觀看原文。

（圖片來源：翻攝自原文）