Riot Employee Fired After League of Legends Blowup

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
1
0
Riot Employee Fired After League of Legends Blowup


A Riot Games employee has been shown the door after verbally abusing a League of Legends [http://www.amazon.com/League-Legends-Pc/dp/B002HOIPCW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295389233&sr=8-1] player and slapping him with an undeserved 30-day ban, all of which was streamed live on his Justin.tv channel.

Things got ugly a couple of nights ago when a League of Legends customer service rep who goes by the name of PsyonicHero got into a beef with another player during a game, calling him some rather nasty names and allegedly throwing a racial slur into the mix for good measure before finally slapping him with a 30-day ban for "feeding." Right or wrong (clearly wrong, as it turns out), the whole thing might have ended there if not for the fact that PsyonicHero himself had broadcast the whole thing on his Justin.tv [http://www.justin.tv/psyonic/videos] channel.

A League of Legends forum thread [http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=451882] quickly sprung to life, pointing out that the video clearly demonstrated the rep's bad behavior and that the banned player had not actually committed the act he was accused of. PsyonicHero deleted the video archive but not before users had taken screen shots of choice moments and posted them in the thread, which as last count had grown to nearly 200 pages.

Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, Riot's director of community relations, initially responded to the situation by acknowledging that PsyonicHero was a Riot employee and saying that an internal investigation would be made. Shortly thereafter, he released a follow-up statement saying that the rep's actions "were both inappropriate and outside the confines of Riot Games internal policy," and that he had been fired as a result.

"As a result of this unfortunate situation the employee in question is no longer with Riot Games," Mescon said in a statement. "Additionally, we will be reviewing internal policy and training procedures to take steps to prevent such incidents from happening in the future."

It's sad to see someone lose a job over what was most likely a heat-of-the-moment reaction to unpleasant behavior, but that's job number one for any online admin: staying cool while dealing with other people's nonsense. Given the events that transpired and the way it all went down, it's hard to see where Riot had any choice but to show this guy the door.

Source: VE3D [http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/58671/Riot-Employee-Leads-By-Example-Following-LoL-Tribunal-Announcement]


Permalink
 

littlewisp

New member
Mar 25, 2010
273
0
0
It's sad to see someone lose a job over what was most likely a heat-of-the-moment reaction to unpleasant behavior
It's sad someone got accepted into a job that he is clearly incapable of handling. :| Good on Riot for acting so quickly.
 

deth2munkies

New member
Jan 28, 2009
1,066
0
0
I've played with him before, he gets that way when he's on a tilt. I had NO idea that Riot had hired him to do anything, though. Shame...
squid5580 said:
Newb question. Laugh if you must. But what is "feeding"?
Intentionally dying repeatedly to give the other team money and xp.
 

Eri

The Light of Dawn
Feb 21, 2009
3,626
0
0
Considering he called the guy a gook, among other things, it is not surprising that this happened.
 

Exort

New member
Oct 11, 2010
647
0
0
Oh so Riot actually does care.
I left LoL after another close beta tester which was a freind of the developer violat the NDA /abusing bug and not banned for it. Those guys were idiot enough to upload the videos(just like this case) to thier website.
At first I believe the part where they abuse bug and violate NDA since they post it on a public website, but I wasn't sure it they really was not banned for being friend of developer. Then one of their name showed up in the lore of LoL. I quited right after.
Never came back to LoL since closed Beta.

One of the guys name was Reginald which is exactly the same name in http://www.leagueoflegends.com/learn/lore/the-league-of-legends

and Ok if even they are not developers friends they still didn't got banned.
 

SovietSecrets

iDrink, iSmoke, iPill
Nov 16, 2008
3,975
0
0
That was a fun thread to be on when it went up. It was 45 pages of people arguing who was in the right and then the truth came out that the employee tried to cover up his actions, but someone had photos of everything that went down.
 

squid5580

Elite Member
Feb 20, 2008
5,106
0
41
Kalezian said:
I hate it when GM's in games pull the "Im a GM, you are not" card, though rare as they may be.

Glad to hear that the guy got what he deserved though, I hope the player atleast gets unbanned quickly.


also, what kind of dumbass would stream that over Justin.Tv live?
Lots of people stream their games on JTV. Don't understand the attraction personally but to each his own.

deth2munkies said:
I've played with him before, he gets that way when he's on a tilt. I had NO idea that Riot had hired him to do anything, though. Shame...
squid5580 said:
Newb question. Laugh if you must. But what is "feeding"?
Intentionally dying repeatedly to give the other team money and xp.
Thank you. Learn something new everyday
 

AngelicSven

New member
Aug 24, 2010
443
0
0
I'm continuously amazed at how much Riot cares about this game and the people who support it. It's very impressive.
 

Goldeneye1989

Deathwalker
Mar 9, 2009
685
0
0
Riot this is some time to give some good Pr to this, get rid of the ban and offer the guy some free stuff.
 

Magnatek

A Miserable Pile of Honesty
Jul 17, 2009
1,695
0
0
Kalezian said:
I hate it when GM's in games pull the "Im a GM, you are not" card, though rare as they may be.

Glad to hear that the guy got what he deserved though, I hope the player atleast gets unbanned quickly.


also, what kind of dumbass would stream that over Justin.Tv live?
I think it was the player's Justin.Tv channel, not the GM's. Never mind, that was bad reading on my part.

OT: Thankfully, I've been fortunate enough to not have encountered jackass staff in games I've played so far. I'm hoping that guy cleans up his act before doing something like that again.
 

HellspawnCandy

New member
Oct 29, 2009
541
0
0
I can't imagine what GM's go through in video games, I always assumed they were robots with a massive ban button just chilling next to them. Obviously this guy went a bit too much out of line.
 

deth2munkies

New member
Jan 28, 2009
1,066
0
0
poiumty said:
deth2munkies said:
squid5580 said:
Newb question. Laugh if you must. But what is "feeding"?
Intentionally dying repeatedly to give the other team money and xp.
Not necessarily intentionally, someone could feed because he's just a bad player.
That's not what feeding is, that's what people CALL feeding because they're morons. Kind of like every time you disagree with someone on an internet forum, you get called a "troll" when that's really not what trolling is.
 

TheAceTheOne

New member
Jul 27, 2010
1,106
0
0
Kalezian said:
I hate it when GM's in games pull the "Im a GM, you are not" card, though rare as they may be.

Glad to hear that the guy got what he deserved though, I hope the player atleast gets unbanned quickly.


also, what kind of dumbass would stream that over Justin.Tv live?
See original post for the answer to your question. In my book, snarky comments and banter are fine... but if this guy did what the original post said he did (and since I believe that he did), he deserved it one hundred percent. Self-control will get you places.
 

IAmTheVoid

New member
Apr 26, 2009
114
0
0
It's a shame that this is going to reflect badly on Riot for what is, effectively, one bad apple. Riot try their hardest to foster a good game and good community, and all the community ever gives them is complete crap, acting entitled and complaining at every corner. This is sad, but at least it might help Riot prevent future god-mods.
 

AngryMongoose

Elite Member
Jan 18, 2010
1,230
0
41
deth2munkies said:
I've played with him before, he gets that way when he's on a tilt. I had NO idea that Riot had hired him to do anything, though. Shame...
squid5580 said:
Newb question. Laugh if you must. But what is "feeding"?
Intentionally dying repeatedly to give the other team money and xp.
Not intentionally. Just getting repeatedly owned. The counterpart to getting fed.
 

Verdilian

New member
Jan 8, 2011
71
0
0
Ha! One more corrupt customer service rep down the drain. It goes to show how Riot Games does care about League of Legends instead of being oblivious. Though, many will probably disagree with me...