Riot employee addresses sexism in VALORANT, promises changes coming soon

Toxicity toward female players in shooters like VALORANT is, unfortunately, something that’s become commonplace, whether it’s in the game itself or through other mediums like Twitch chat or YouTube comments. 

But one Riot Games employee has promised that the team is working on something that will be detailed in the near future to help fix the rampant problem with sexism in its game. 

Lea, otherwise known as aeneia, who works on insights and strategy at Riot, recently commented on multiple Reddit threads that revolved around toxicity toward the female population in VALORANT. One of the posters blatantly said she finds it hard to “gain courage to play” because she’s disrespected or harassed 70 percent of the time when she uses voice chat. 

In response, aeneia said the team at Riot is listening and aware that “the social experience for minority groups, women included, is awful right now.” 

“I promise, we’re working on it,” aeneia said. “I can’t speak to any details right now, but if all goes to plan, you’ll be hearing from us in the near future with actions and updates. In the meantime, remember to report. It doesn’t fix the issue immediately, which sucks, but we can’t fix it at all if you don’t raise a flag to tell us it’s happening.”

In a separate post, aeneia followed up by reposting her original comments and adding her own experience into the mix. 

“I have played so many games where women don’t speak up until after I start talking,” aeneia said. “Once they hear my voice, and they see that no one is giving me crap, they know it’s safe. I cannot wait for the day when I get into agent select and hear other women (or kids, or anyone with a targetable voice) pipe up and say hello first. Because they’ll know it’ll be safe to do so. Because we’ll have cut this obscene shit out of our game.”

Aeneia thanked anyone who’s given the game a chance despite the bad experiences and reiterated that multiple teams at Riot are “working hard towards a future where you don’t have to deal with shit like this anymore.”