Business enterprise enterprise. Numbers.Screenshot: Riot Games / Kotaku
Forgetting it’s not April Fool’s Day, Riot Games simply introduced that two-time Grammy award-winning artist Lil Nas X is the president of League of Legends.
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Although the writer introduced this by way of a real press launch, in actuality, Riot Games didn’t, in fact, really rent the pop music icon as its president. While the publicity stunt didn’t cease Riot Games and “Lil Nas Xecutive” from having some enjoyable in a goofy YouTube announcement video and redubbing League’s official Twitter account as “LoLNasX,” the pop star will in truth be closely concerned with League of Legends’ approaching 2022 League World Championship.
League of Legends
According to the press launch, Lil Nas X’s upcoming tune, “STAR WALKIN’,” which he’s scheduled to carry out stay on the Worlds opening ceremony on November 5, will function the occasion’s official anthem. In addition to lending League his music, Lil Nas X helped co-design a status pores and skin for the sport’s latest character Okay’Sante, the Pride of Nazumah. The pores and skin will launch worldwide on November 3 and be unlockable till November 14.
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Riot Games’ YouTube vid with Lil Nas X is fairly entertaining, with scenes depicting the pop star sitting on a gold throne, employees distributing telephones that play his new observe, and underlings gawking at how apparently, by merely saying you might be one thing— just like the president of League—it will possibly mechanically come true. But don’t get it twisted, the online game firm’s try at satire ignores its precise, harrowing enterprise practices.
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Read More: Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games
In December of 2021, Riot Games agreed to pay a $100 million settlement in a gender discrimination lawsuit levied in opposition to the corporate again in 2018, by which a former worker alleged the corporate of fostering a “men-first” setting.
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This previous April, an worker at Riot likened working there to “Russian roulette” when the corporate determined to drop not simply its vaccine and masks mandates but in addition the requirement that unvaccinated staff bear common covid testing. This, at a time when case numbers for covid-19 continued to rise
And, in fact, it’s the corporate the place an govt really needed to resign after making abhorrent feedback about George Floyd, whose homicide by Minneapolis police sparked 2020’s renewed BLM protests.
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While it’s all enjoyable and video games, fairly actually, for Riot Games to advertise its upcoming esports extravaganza with a music and social media icon of Lil Nas X’s renown, its promotional YouTube video is tone-deaf to the precise work circumstances that the corporate has cultivated.