4 ms·

This is worse than overreach. It's actively subverting your employer. If you work for a bank touting stock X, you can't in troll Yahoo boards crapping on it.

This is worse than overreach. It's actively subverting your employer. 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)

enraged_camel 10y ago
You can do both of those things anonymously. The problem is that, in Riot's case, employees are required to use their Riot username when they play, and IIRC the game clearly identifies them as Riot employees. Furthermore, the problem employees in question tried to influence their teammates by pulling rank on them or intimidating them using their employee status. That, I suspect, is the main reason they got in trouble.
- duskwuff 10y ago
  Having players who are employees always explicitly identified by the game seems like a bad idea from the get-go. It exposes them to unusual user behavior, both from users that will not misbehave when they see an employee is present, and from users who will deliberately antagonize the employee. It also places employees in a situation where they may be tempted to pull rank on their customers; if they aren't identified as employees, they have no way of credibly doing so. 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.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    My guess is that it serves to quench the common player criticism of "omg, this game is so unbalanced, it's like the developers don't even play their own game!" 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.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      I think that's the point - they're great playing the game, but not when they ruin it as trolls.

enraged_camel 10y ago

You can do both of those things anonymously. The problem is that, in Riot's case, employees are required to use their Riot username when they play, and IIRC the game clearly identifies them as Riot employees. Furthermore, the problem employees in question tried to influence their teammates by pulling rank on them or intimidating them using their employee status. That, I suspect, is the main reason they got in trouble.

duskwuff 10y ago
Having players who are employees always explicitly identified by the game seems like a bad idea from the get-go. It exposes them to unusual user behavior, both from users that will not misbehave when they see an employee is present, and from users who will deliberately antagonize the employee. It also places employees in a situation where they may be tempted to pull rank on their customers; if they aren't identified as employees, they have no way of credibly doing so. 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.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  My guess is that it serves to quench the common player criticism of "omg, this game is so unbalanced, it's like the developers don't even play their own game!" 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.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    I think that's the point - they're great playing the game, but not when they ruin it as trolls.