Aaron Rutledge was one of the developers who used to work for Riot Games. He was responsible for designing certain quality-of-life features for League of Legends, including finding ways to make the game less toxic. He was an overseer of toxicity, in some ways, but he soon found himself on the receiving end of criticisms for “toxic behavior”, and he was then fired for being toxic. Rutledge is now seeking help to deal with his toxicity by checking into rehab.
Content creator Bro Team Pill didn’t hesitate to garner a few laughs at Rutledge’s expense.
ha ha weird that the guy in charge of reducing league of legends’ ｔｏｘｉｃ experiences turned out to be ｔｏｘｉｃ himselfhttps://t.co/RiDU66K43Z
— Bro Team Pill (@BroTeamPill) October 10, 2017
GamesIndustry.biz originally reported that Rutledge was fired for making disparaging comments about a former League of Legends player named Tyler1. It turns out Tyler1 used to be highly “toxic” player, and during a conversation in the Discord chat some players suggested that Tyler1 may have become reformed. In the chat, Rutledge dismissed the possibility of Tyler1’s rehabilitation, saying…
“He looks like a damn homunculus. Honestly… it’s fine he’ll die from a coke overdose or testicular cancer from all the steroids… then we’ll be gucci.”
Riot wasn’t pleased with these comments, especially after the Reddit community spotted the comments. Tyler1 also managed to pick the comments out of the social media storm like Dionysus picking grapes off a vine blowing through the wind. Surprisingly enough, Tyler1 humbly responded to the constroversy on Twitter with the following statement.
It really sucks that some people still hold a massive grudge vs old T1 and refuse to acknowledge I’ve changed.
— loltyler1 (@lol_tyler1) October 1, 2017
Tyler1’s smugly responsible tweet forced Riot’s hand, which resulted in Rutledge having to apologize for his comments before getting fired.
The ex-Riot employee is now telling Glixel that his toxicity levels were just too high and he’s now subjugated himself to rehab for his consumption of alcohol and his inebriated comments…
“Riot has a really strong set of values about how they think about and speak to players and I foolishly threw that out the window that night.” […]
“Fueled by alcohol, I realize I was incredibly arrogant and inappropriate. The positive side of that realization is that I’ve decided to get help for my drinking.”
“[…] I’m checking into a rehab center to try and figure out how my drinking led to this happening,”
Many have been mocking Rutledge and Riot for how the person who was supposed to be responsible for helping create systems to deal with toxicity in League of Legends turned out to be toxic himself.
This situation isn’t isolated to just Riot Games, though. Blizzard recently took an opportunity to blame their own community for being so toxic that it’s prevented the developers from creating new content for Overwatch. Gamers rightfully called them out for attempting to shift the blame for not creating worthwhile content for the first-person shooter.
(Thanks for the news tip Keystone)
