Riot’s Patchwork of Thieve and Deceive

“Treasured gateways”

Allegations and lawsuits against Conor McGregor echo the troubles of Riot Games.

Pick n Mix, Swipe n Gripe, Sparkle Harvesting and victim blaming, shaming and abusing tactics of Riot Games.

Please note, I do not make any allegations of guilt against Conor McGregor. I’m merely using current events to draw parallels and to articulate concerns.

Riot Games has a long history of “Thieve and Deceive”. Indeed, it is my belief, with reason and evidence, that the above mentioned dishonourable, deplorable and illegal business tactics of Riot Games are unwritten policies developed with intention at the inception of Riot Games. Furthermore, the early Bro-mancing culture at Riot fostered these practices and will continue to do so, until the people are removed, and a new paradigm of business practice and control is set on solid ground. No amount of interventions nor fines will fix dodgy foundations, unless they’re rebuilt on firm ground and the tonguing is done.

The big and often corrupt organisations take and take and get fat on each other’s soggy white seeds as the real creators are kept subdued by anti-competitive behaviours and what I recently heard Eric Weinstein term “The old Swipe n Gripe.” They take the work of others, by swiping it. Then they gripe. Which I use to mean change it to their own and complain or give criticism to the original. This is worrisome enough, yet the ignorance to the driving forces behind these corrupt organisations is the real danger.

I worry about Riot Games… I’m very worried. I am deeply concerned about Arcane, Riot Games and the stuff under the hood. This is a snippet of what I believe and will share in full length articles when I’m ready. Arcane is stolen from my Bloodborg: The Harvest manuscript submitted to Riot Forge, and I can show this. Moreover, the timelines of production are fake to deceive customers and hide IP theft. The fake writers have deliberately engaged in editing and backdating lies, then controlling information, in a method which resembles espionage and propaganda and disinformation tactics which bear a resemblance to militarised government origins. I know these methods well. These are systematically implemented to evade lawful processes and to build plausible deniability. Who’s behind these unwritten policies?

I propose, two college students did not happen upon intricate and well established methods and tactics of psy-ops and deception. I propose, the driving force behind Riot’s success and riches is not the quality of their product nor there Free-To-Play method, nor the Loss Lead methods of marketing events. I suggest, Riot’s success is, and always has been, access to data and who controls said data.

Riot has a data stream which acts as a neurological like network, pulsing through the veins of the world. Said brain has binary eyes in every home of its players. Who needs a spy balloon when you have a potential asset in every home? Riot, and by extension Tencent Games, knows who plays too much, who’s angry, the most toxic and disturbed of all its toxic crusaders. This type of hyper competitive and toxic gaming radicalises isolated minds. Young men – mostly- who feel shunned and rejected by society feel a sense of belonging in these communities, where they are subjected to the petrification of ideas and behaviours, much like echo chambers. Then these young men are slapped with derogatory language and labels such as Incel which makes them regress further into aggressive patterns of hate, both for them self and for others. Often, this hate is directed at girls and women because they do not desire to sleep with, nor be with men or boys who refuse to grow up. This is the Puer Aeternus! The “eternal boy”. In Jungian psychology, the term 'puer' is used to describe an adult man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, usually coupled with too great a dependence on the mother. Eternal boys begin to place blame on their mothers, and women who they conceptualise as the mother archetype, and on society.

Inside the games however, they feel powerful and required. They feel a sense of belonging and purpose. This reality of self in the digital world, is at odds with the reality of self in the real world. At some point, the vail must slip and the two worlds must collide. This collision point is a vulnerability node. This is the concerning, or radicalising fork in the road. The problem at Riot here, and its lack of responsible practices, is many-fold. Including:

1. Unstable, emotionally undeveloped and isolated young men are susceptible to the conditions of business and behaviours they see in the companies who make the games they play, and indeed the online worlds they inhabit. Such as sexual harassment, discrimination, persistent theft, selling out, retaliations and threats of violence, no remorse and not learning from mistakes, as well as a general lack of moral fibre. They see Riot games engaging in these behaviours and normalise them, which is dangerous.

2. Unstable and emotional undeveloped men who hate women are susceptible to violent outbursts, sexual violence and mass shootings.

3. Unstable and emotional undeveloped young men with volatile grasps of the real world are easy targets for radicalisation and mass violence.

4. Unstable and emotional undeveloped young men with volatile grasps of the real world are easily converted as assets or agents. For instance, if a terrorist organisation, or an adversaries intelligence services wanted to gain access to a US nuclear base, all they have to do is use the neurological like data mapping network to analyse players living in close proximity to the base, find a vulnerable player with a link to a person with access to the base, make a data profile to find his or her vices, then they have many methods of sweating this target/ potential assets including: appeal to the vices, threaten, blackmail, honeytrap, money or radicalisation. Now they have an asset! However, even without the asset the data alone maps out so much information about the locations, health and so many more things about national security.

Riot were spat too much, too rapidly, to evolve into a reputable and safe company and the founders were all too happy to chew it up and spit out your data in return, without a second thought for the security implications of these business practices. Thus Riot has always been chasing its own tail, trying to grip hold of itself. Now because of its dodgy foundations, it’s a runaway train, evading retribution, destine for disaster. It will derail, its just a question of when, and which of the many sins will be its tipping point.

The same can be said for Conor McGregor. He was just a normal, ambitious young man, perhaps a victim of his own monumental rise. He shot to fame too quickly, after a lengthy period of hard work, sacrifice and dedication. He was on top of the world, the highest paid sports personality, the biggest ever draw in MMA, a master of the psychological mind game… and then he wasn’t. He hadn’t matured emotionally. The fame, rise and fall got inside his mind, infecting it. He masked it with a bravado front and self-medicated with alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. These things made him a target, but also hid the monster of insecurity and instability of his psyche.

Who really knows if Conor did the horrible things he is accused of? Or if he was honey trapped? It’s not my place to comment, he has the right to appeal, and also, the guilt is not my point. Either way, both are very bad. Both hint at an unhealthy man, harbouring demons. Either way, he laid the foundations that got him into the messes he is in because of his vices.

The same can be said for Riot Games, yet we know they’re guilty many times over. But we should also try to understand why Riot engages in the behaviours which it so evidently does. They also experienced the monumental rise and didn’t consider who they were climbing into bed with. Perhaps they didn’t have the foresight to consider the security risks being a global neurological like network of data would bring. Perhaps the unusual rise also went to the heads of Riot and its early Bro-mancer club members before the company could mature. Perhaps the bros needed a nurturing mother figure or a guiding father figure. Perhaps they didn’t give a fuck so long as they earnt money.

Who really knows?

What we do know is, Riot is not a healthy company, the adequate business practices were not implemented in the early years, and this has led to Bro-mancing cheaters running riot on other people’s work and IP, and Riot Games has had to work overtime to mask theft, discrimination, sexual harassment, sabotage, anti-competitive practices, incompetence and generally deplorable and harmful behaviours.

These behaviours of chasing its own tail to hide ineptness and crimes and to save its crumbling reputation include the “Treasured Gateways” unwritten policy of leaving tiny nuggets for plausible deniability when merging their characters and worlds into other people’s work and property, and Riot’s incongruent narratives it tries to merge into its characters, and the never-ending IP theft then masking of it, and the spurious IP wars, and the endless retcons, and the illegal NDAs, and the endless allegations against Riot.

Now let’s be fair to Riot, as we have been to McGregor. Is it all Riot’s fault? No… unscrupulous employees have run riot inside Riot for far too long and this has been left unchecked because Riot did not build suitable foundations and quality assurance practices. Riot has been caught with its pants down many times over, just like McGregor, because it didn’t have the correct protocols nor maturity to stop the abusers from abusing, or even to spot the abuse. Riot is known to be a place creative people go to “Fuck about” whilst getting paid well and working on their own stuff. Riot have either remained unaware or unperturbed about it because they are spat so much money they don’t care. This has lead to mass IP infringements all over all its products, and I’m not just talking about Arcane, which is all adapted from my Bloodborg manuscript.

However, Riot set the foundations of Thieve and Deceive, so of course their employees are going to “Fuck About” and get paid whilst working on their own stuff. Thus Riot ends up with low end work effort, adapted from other characters and stories, with just enough drizzle to keep the inept managers off their backs. It’s all thinly masquerading as something new or different. Its so bad that most of the Rioters clearly don’t even engage with the drizzle half arsed lore and narratives of the past, they just paste right over it again and again They do not respect the work of the last person in the hot seat because why bother when the company and previous employees have been at it from the start and getting away with it at that. Why would you give your best knowing that it will be erased as soon as they find another narrative to steal and force into their worlds. IP theft via Swipe n Gripe is a learnt behaviour and practice at Riot Games and everyone knows it.

It works like this:

1. Before 2019- Riot has no in-depth nor consistent lore but knows it needs it and knows that its employees are not going to put their best foot forward. Its best chance is Swipe n Gripe and it knows so.

2. Early on in its life, Riot laid “Treasured gateways.” These are one liner ambiguous sayings or overview stories with massive gaps, open to interpretation and adaptation. Like “Glorious evolution”.

3. Riot expands, dropping IP swipe traps as well as vague and malleable plausible deniability nuggets everywhere. It has over 169 characters, and features many animals and other creatures, each with many skins, styles and personas with thousands of one liners and inconsistent features, backstories and properties across a number of different worlds, games and stories, each laying tiny “Treasured gateways” which they can use as nodes of theft, or IP swipe traps.

4. Riot normalises backdating, changing appearances, changing stories and even total retcons to hide its tactics of theft and backdating. Thus when they have to erase evidence of its crimes, it doesn’t seem so suspicious.

5. The fans communicate online, stitching together theories, narratives and backstories of their own. An example would be the fan theory that Jinx hates Vi because they are sisters, despite them being from different cities which are not yet fleshed out and started far apart.

6. Riot Pick n Mix’s what it likes, has a few employees send out a few teasers to pretend that it was always a plan, like Ghostcrawler Greg Street did for Vi and Jinx.

7. Then when they find a place to mix in these Treasured gateways, often stolen, they force it into their evolving narrative, then retcon whatever no longer fits the narratives or characters, words or worlds. Thus there is zero integrity in anything Riot does. A perfect example would be Viktor turning from a Dr Doom rip-off to a Bloodborg (from my manuscript) and using the one liner “Glorious evolution” to pretend that the plan was to always make him like this, despite all his backstory also being very different. Thus without a direction and with tens of thousands of features to Pick N Mix from, they can make a patchwork of any narrative or character, or setting, stitching in their own characters or cities and bringing them align by erasing everything that doesn’t fit, including all of their lore of the past.

8. Then they control the flow of the truth by slapping illegal NDA’s on all their workers, buying and editing websites such as the fan wiki page so that they can control the narrative, and threatening to ban content creators who talk about the theft and dodgy practices at Riot. Then they backdate and back edit their work and dates and timelines, and fire anyone who they no longer need because of the new direction.

9. Then they threaten, discriminate, intimidate and retaliate to anyone who speaks out against them and their IP theft.

10. Then they engage in spurious IP wars because they do not care about the implications of their behaviours and the damage they cause, so long as they are making money and the bro-mancers get to lift awards they gained from stealing work.

In conclusion, I suggest that not only are Riot Games an unhealthy, discriminatory, immature and dishonest company, but also a prolific thieving company with tactics of theft embedded into their unwritten policies, games and products with the “Treasured gateways” initiative and other concealing tactics of business. I suggest that Riot’s past and present behaviours will lead to many more cases against them, and it will derail them unless they totally cut out the rest of the rot of the early bro-mancing club, such as Linke and Yee and many others. I suggest that it might already be too late. I also suggest that it will have to do better than selected – from thousands - one liners like “Glorious evolution”, to fool me and to win any case.

I’ll pick their lies apart and publicly embarrass hundreds of people who have lied to protect Riot. I suggest that nothing at all which Riot says and no amount of forged evidence they produce- like a pitch called Arcane from way back when Linke was still gothing on his violin- will convince me or anyone else that Bloodborg wasn’t cut up and fed into Arcane to bailout the failing show and to gain funding, then they targeted my mental health vulnerability to mask their theft and deception. Riot is a tech giant, of course they can manipulate files to deceive. And of course we know they have engaged in these behaviours of theft and deception, then masking, like one of the founders, Tryndamere, did in 2016 to boost his ego, I mean ranking, by paying a player, then they moan about competitive integrity. Or like when they stole Bloodborg to make Arcane, then threatened a young woman for using the word Arcane. Or like when they abused fan art without permission, modifying it with AI tools for in-game icons of champions Zyra and Evelynn, then moaned about their shows host, Netflix, extending a piece of Arcane’s art with Ai to fit it into a promotional piece, to promote the show… which Riot stole from Bloodborg. Or like when they placed illegal NDAs on women, then retaliated until the state of California- too big to bully- had to intervene and give them corrective treatment, so they stole themes of diversity, inclusion, trauma and womanhood from Bloodborg, to mask compliance and to misrepresent a front of change, whilst crediting two of the Bro-mancing men (Linke & Yee) for the show they stole from a disabled vulnerable adult (Me), then gaslighted said writer, and hired “Cultural fits” and women, like Melinda, to make the show, but didn’t credit them as the real showrunners.

Please, this only shows that they haven’t even bothered to change but are engaging in disguised compliance to get the authorities off their backs but have not followed through with any meaningful actions or behavioural changes or practices under the band aid. I predict that Riot will shut up shop and move its HQ to China in less than two years to avoid the pain of growing out of a sinful, bro-mancing, hideous and abusive company into a reputable one, and to evade the lawful guidelines of safe and ethical business practices of US and Europe. And perhaps to evade the flood of cases of its past deviant ways.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

M.W. Wolf