Riot Claims Cooperation In California Discrimination Probe, Government Alleges Otherwise

Riot Games has not finished dealing with the fallout surrounding the gender discrimination and sexual harassment issues brought forth by employees last year. And now, the government's involved -- or, at least the state of California. Actually, they've been involved for a while now, but things are starting to heat up.

Last night, Kotaku reported that the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing are in the process of filing a suit against the game developer designed to make them provide documentation related to an investigation into the gender discrimination reported by Riot employees.

According to the DFEH, even though the investigation was opened last October, the game developer has yet to provide any of the requested information on employee pay. This is despite meeting with Riot on several occasions. The organization is seeking "basic employment data" that employers are required by law to keep on hand. The requested information is pertinent to the accusations of gender discrimination affecting pay at the company.

Riot, for their part, has responded to the DFEH's suit, telling Kotaku that they've "been in active conversations" with the government organization since the investigation began. They added that they've "promptly responded" to requests and have provided around "2,500 pages of documents and several thousand lines of pay data" to the DFEH.

Riot also notes they've been trying to get the DFEH to hop on the phone with them to discuss things. That not a tactic you generally see used with the government since they love to do everything in a written format. The other option is generally them showing up at your door -- and nobody wants that. So, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.