Some notes on ‘Riot should kick EG out of Valorant’

The first draft of that story was a reported piece about how EG secured a partnership slot in the VCT. Since the first round of major layoffs at EG, I had the pleasure of interviewing former employees with visibility into the org’s partnership application. My initial goal was to stamp a big fat period on the endless “how did they even get into partnership?” discourse around the org.

At a certain point, though, I started to feel that a straightforward report would not really meet the moment. It wasn’t a gradual shift; I just realized suddenly that there was a severity to the issues surrounding EG that was making it difficult for me to focus on any of the other facets of the story.

I pivoted then to a somewhat genteel form of polemic. There is a bomb-throwing tradition in esports writing, but I’m not convinced that that approach would move my intended audience: the folks with leverage in the EG-Riot relationship.

I’m also sensitive to the risks of the firebrand approach. Publishing your opinion marks you. To some people, you become the “kick EG” guy after publishing the “kick EG” piece. That can — in some circumstances — make future reporting difficult. Opinions are prone to misinterpretation. Sources might come to a conversation with their mind made up about your convictions and integrity. Some may not talk to you at all.

A footnote-worthy aside here: I noticed that a lot of folks, including many who responded positively to the essay, referred to it as a “report.” I realize this isn’t a fight I can win, but the EG piece wasn’t really a report. There were reported elements, certainly — chiefly the quotes from former employees — but in its thrust, the article was an opinion piece, or an essay. This doesn’t matter that much, except as a matter of media literacy, but I did notice a minority of readers seemed to think it was a report, and understandably got mad at me when there wasn’t really any new information, just my take.

(This will become more evident in future editions of ReaderGrev, but I’m interested in experimenting with style and form, so it’s very likely that future stories will deviate in even more dramatic ways from the usual idea of a “report” in esports. I will probably need to write more disclaimers like this in the future.)

Ok, back to the content of the essay.

Some folks have asked why Riot should kick out an organization if it promises to fulfill its obligations as outlined in the partnership agreement. I think the particulars matter. I think recently I’ve grown a bit tired of the strain of online argumentation that boils down the specifics of a case into a less offensive, more generic version of the situation, and then asks you to make your case against that hazier version of events. Of course, if you boil down the Evil Geniuses situation to “the org is running a budget roster,” then it would be much harder to argue that Riot should kick them out of the VCT. But that is not, in fact, an accurate description of EG’s strategy and conduct. (Crucially, save for EG, Riot is the actor in this situation with the greatest visibility into the details surrounding EG’s alleged misconduct.) I do think this question was largely asked in good faith, but I think the instinct to abstract away the details doesn’t really advance the conversation in a meaningful way.

Another question I saw a lot was: “What should Riot do, specifically?” I don’t have a great answer to this question, mostly because Riot’s internal processes are a mystery to me. I’m aware of some levers Riot has pulled to resolve the EG situation, but I think guessing at what else they might do would amount to writing corporate fan fiction. That’s not a very satisfying answer, I know, but trying to imagine the legal and contractual mechanisms Riot might employ would be tantamount to trying to guess what it says on some random page of a book I haven’t read. I know there are words there — just like I know that Riot can act. But that’s about it.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers, Mikhail