Almost all of my friends there have separate personal and work ("Riot<username>") accounts, the latter at the very least requires you to set a good example as a company representative
You don't need to share your primary account, you can theoretically apply for the job with a secondary, or none.
This isn't exactly strict separation of personal life, you are basically working at a specific venue and playing at that same venue just without your uniform; people know and you won't last long in similar situations elsewhere either (unless you're maliken/s2 games)
So, are you saying that once they acquire a company provided account their personal ones are no longer audited? That doesn't seem to be the case at all.
[1]A random job posting from Riot http://www.riotgames.com/careers/10838
"While our engineers come in all shapes and sizes and work with many technologies, we expect every engineer at Riot to be:
Player-focused: you’re a gamer whose passion for games (especially League of Legends)"
What is not normal is asking prospective employees for their user id and making decisions based off of the chat logs attached to it. I mean, it makes sense, but it seems like an invasion of privacy.
Would it be fair for YC to make decisions based off of the HN comment logs of YC applicants?
Sometimes you do stupid things and I believe you shouldn't be forever in the future held accountable for what you said in the past.
They explicitly do this.
Certainly : acting like a fool in your place of employ is bad. However, using your analogy as an example, what's happening here is also a bit like those 3 AM campus shenanigans that occurred while you were a student being held against you when you go looking for a job - since Riot is screening potential employees based on their game history.
If Riot screens applicants based on their LoL behavior, then why shouldn't Facebook? Google? Why shouldn't any of these respective companies sell said information to other 3rd party companies that want to pre-screen hires?
Ultimately I guess I'm arguing against a fully transparent world, because as happy as I am with my electronic footprint - I'm not sure how happy I am about the idea of everyone in the world who I interact with peering at it with a microscope.
This is a bit like saying "it's less about the means, but about the ends". I don't think anyone's confused about your motivations.
> We're a player focused company, and if you're a total jerk to strangers because you've tilted, how can you be expected to make the game better for those same people?
I'm as jerk averse as the next person, but this reasoning is on the weak side. History is full of jerks who have made important contributions to their field despite of (or because of) their jerkiness. Edison, Ford, Jobs : all jackasses of epic proportions who all made quality products.
Ultimately, you do you. If you want to shit can jerks, then shit can jerks. I just feel like there are more germane - and less creepily invasive - metrics that can be applied to someone's job performance than their behavior in a game.
edit : I've responded to another one of your comments elsewhere, and just want to add some clarifying context. I really don't want to start defending in game trolls, because the specifics seem to be indefensible (racism, death threats, et al). My concern is a step removed into a hypothetical bigger picture, where everything we do electronically becomes fair game for assessment and auditing - and I see this as a step in that direction.
If you work for a bank touting stock X, you can't in troll Yahoo boards crapping on it.
If you work at a school teaching kids math, you can't troll on-line forums giving wrong answers to math problems. (At least morally)
Most other online games I've played have had a policy of not identifying players as employees unless they're actively acting as a moderator (e.g, gamemasters in MMORPGs, who aren't really playing the game anyways). I'm very surprised that Riot isn't following their lead here.
And, from what I remember, the LoL community generally really enjoys playing with Riot employees. Back when I used to play (several years ago now) I don't remember running into a single toxic Riot employee. Then again they didn't have very many employees then.
Riot and every Rioter should be ashamed that this process is taking place. Search up on Henry Ford's practice of invading employees' private lives. It's disgusting. And what you guys are doing is no different. I can't believe there are employees defending this in public... anything to gain favor with your bosses, huh?
I appreciate the context - this wasn't really super clear from the article. It's completely nuts that anyone would behave this way on a Riot-named account.
Was this sort of behavior prevalent? I'm honestly surprised it's never come up. If I was in a game and witnessed a Riot employee going off on players with racial slurs and death threats - that most certainly would have been screenshot and reddit frontpage worthy.
Either way, specifics aside this sort of behavior is obviously completely unacceptable in a place of employ (of which a company sponsored account is an extension).
My concern with this growing "no assholes" or "no toxic people" sentiment is that it sounds great, but who gets to decide who is and who isn't?
From my perspective, they're hiring someone to have access to their codebase; release their code to millions of users; and spend most of the day next to other people. Hiring is already a blunt tool for finding out if someone can do the work, much less interact well with others. As long as the information isn't completely unrelated to their job function, and it's not discriminatory, it seems reasonable to use all the information at your disposal to reduce that risk.
> As long as the information isn't completely unrelated to their job function, and it's not discriminatory, it seems reasonable to use all the information at your disposal to reduce that risk.
Does it seem reasonable for Google to analyze the personal email accounts of their employees? If not, how is that any different from what's being discussed here?
You're trying to reason this through from a technology perspective, which is not how others are thinking about it. What matters more is the perception, not the software that makes it happen. We think of Gchat, email and hangouts as private communication. But playing an online game is more like being in a public space, so we have less expectation of privacy. Online games already have mechanisms for reporting toxic players, so you know going in: someone else may look at what I said.
I think this is pretty dissimilar from the hypothetical I raised, that being screening the personal email of all potential hires.
Does this imply that chat in a 1v1 game is private? That doesn't really follow, since the only difference is the # of immediate spectators
> Anything said in in a LoL game is as sufficiently public as a Twitter account.
I suppose I see where you're coming from, but this feels like a stretch. For starters, the vast (utterly overwhelming) majority of LoL players do not have a real name associated with their gaming handle. They're theoretically similar, but in practice are far from equivalent.
Couldn't agree more, honestly. However, I had to acknowledge that the parent had a point in that they were theoretically comparable.
See http://www.pcgamesn.com/starcraft/starcraft-2-progamer-steph...
That said, still glad I don't work there. To my mind, this sort of company behavior sets an unpleasant precedent, and I kind of like knowing I have the freedom to play a game without worrying about being fired for "snarky passive aggression" or something similar. Maybe I'd feel differently if gaming wasn't just something I did in my spare time.