[AstralSerenity]

Honestly, I strongly disagree. I've played a wide breadth of games, and I can't think of a game studio the size of Riot that is as community-engaged and pro-consumer.

Examples range from the quality of their patch notes, dev articles and videos, to their constant presence on reddit, and willingness to walk back decisions based on public outcry (Hextech Chests, League Classic monetization, etc).

Heck, after Riot gave up on Hytale, they were willing to sell the IP and assets back to the original creator while providing extremely generous severance packages for the entire team. I genuinely don't think any of the other companies you listed would have done the same.

[throw10920]

> I can't think of a game studio the size of Riot that is as community-engaged and pro-consumer

Valve.

This is also just a crazy statement to make.

> Examples range from the quality of their patch notes, dev articles and videos, to their constant presence on reddit

None of this is pro-user.

What's highly anti-user is the not only permittance but endorsement of smurf accounts, kernel-level anticheat, penalizing users for your own bugs (said anticheat, crashes, LLM chat filters catching on nothing, "parental controls" that trigger on every user multiple times), propagating an extremely toxic community (players telling others to kill themselves or using racial slurs is a regular occurrence) by refusing to do chat moderation or any sort of sane penalty system, fining pro players in pro games for picking a champ+rune combo with a bug that they refused to fix for months (and that the player didn't exploit), whatever this[1] is, the CEO of the company intentionally doxxing the lead developer of a competing game, and many, many other malicious things.

[1] https://www.resetera.com/threads/riot-games-sends-cringey-ed...

[AstralSerenity]

Note my comment on size. I think folks forget how lean Valve is with only ~330 employees. I love Valve, but it's not quite apples to apples. Their flat, lean structure doesn't function like a typical corporation, and their industry-leading margins and functional monopoly (one that I enjoy) places far less pressure on their need to monetize.

That said, if we're trying to hinge our discussion on moderation, anyone who plays CS knows players to this day can utter the most reprehensible, racist garbage and expect no punishment. There is a reason Valorant, in comparison, has an incredibly diverse gender pool. I've heard from plenty of women about how "enjoyable" it is to use voice chat in CS.

This also doesn't even touch on Valve's role in gambling addiction...

I still stand by my original statement as it was intended.