Alienware breaks partnership with Riot due to sexual harassment's lawsuit
Alienware terminates sponsorship with Riot's League of Legends due to sexual harassment claims with Riot's CEO.
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Alienware breaks partnership with Riot due to sexual harassment's lawsuit
The global eSports partnership started last 2019 which isn't supposed to end until January 22, but recently all of Alienware's branding has been removed successfully from all of League of Legends broadcasting last weekend.
Riot Games is popularly known as a video game developer giant. They became successful with the League of Legends as their flagship title as well as producing one of the hottest shooting games today known as Valorant. They're also one of the largest hosts for major E-Sports tournaments such as the highly anticipated League of Legends Championship.
While Alienware is a well-known gaming brand owned by the tech giant dell which is one of the biggest sponsors for League of Legends.
Based on the report of Jacob Wolf at Dot Esports, legal action was filed last January against the CEO of Riot Games, Nicolo Laurent.
Sharon O'Donnell, Riot's former executive assistant, filed a case against Nicolo Lauren which accused him of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. As claimed by Sharon, Riot's CEO made sexist comments, conditioning her job based on her cooperation to sexual advancements. It even reached a point where Nicolo invites her to work on his home whenever his wife is out.
Sharon also accused Nicolo of becoming angry when she refuses to cooperate with his sexual advances which resulted in affecting her responsibilities at work being reduced. She believed that her termination was when she rebuffed his advances. On the other hand, Riot countered her claims by conducting a separate investigation of the case and said that her termination was due to "multiple well-documented complaints from different people".
Riot also had previous allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination in its workplace which was first criticized in a report made by Kotaku. The report consists of unlawful acts against women, sexism, disrespect, and gender discrimination.
The game developer may be successful today but with all these issues surrounding Riot, they may face reduced brand image which can be bad for them in long term and Alienware was the one who did it first.
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