Riot Games has been forced to chime in after news spread of a League of Legends event that discriminates vs LGBT players.
While Riot is both developer and publisher of the game in North America, it has partners in different parts of the world. One of them, Garena, handles publishing duties for South East Asia.
Garena’s Philippines arm has arranged for a women-only tournament called the Iron Solari. After hearing concerns about LGBT players, Garena consulted with involved parties, including women and LGBT players, and decided to instituted to undisputably restrictive and poorly conceived rules.
Garena has instituted rules that mandate each team can have only one LGBT player, and any team that breaks this rule is banned on all Garena events for a year.
Of course, Garena may not realize the discriminatory nature of their decision, and the subsequent uproar their decision has caused online, which you can easily confirm for yourself here.
For their part, Riot Games shared this statement on Twitter:
LGBT players are welcome at official LoL tourneys. We're working with partners to ensure consistency with our values across all regions.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) February 3, 2015
