First: This post came to my mind after i saw Phreak stepping down from Social Media. Obviously noone should ever threaten anybody’s life, especially not over a video game and i detest this kind of behaviour.
But: In the end, people act out of emotion. Emotions that Riot and their company are trying to build up while playing the game. Emotions they are trying to effect to make you buy their stuff, to watch their events, earn any kind of money. Some things in this game are bugged for a long time, champs being in the gutter, communication only taking place when riot wants it, not when users look for it (besides reddit comments, but this is no official way that players will be taught. This is a nieche way some people are aware about.)
Also, Riot has had a young playerbase since forever and especially young people can have a hard time with controlling their feelings and aggression. We share the world with the first generation of smartphoners, who at times access the www since they are 4 and behave like this.
Summarized, they are messing with peoples heads, emotions, their lives, sometimes existances for no good reason that is shown or comunicated. You really think it is so far off that your employees will be attacked for this?
So is it too much asked for them to look out for their employees? They could look for ways to protect them, help them by paying for professional help or just address issues and/or properly fix things instead of bandaid-fixing major problems, ignoring unplayable bugs. etc. Is the anger that the people have not a logical consequence about the way you affect young people’s heads to make profit?
TL;DR: If the right people at Riot cared, would we be here?
How about instead of victim blaming, we just don’t send death threats, crazy Idea I know. But imagine trying to blame Riot for the community sending death threats
Summarized, they are messing with peoples heads, emotions, their lives, sometimes existances for no good reason that is shown or comunicated. You really think it is so far off that your employees will be attacked for this?
Attacking an employee of a company like that is unnaceptable. Period.
Even if you have mounting frustrations over the game, lashing out like that is straight up not an okay thing to do.
Players and consumers acting responsibly is not the burden of the devs, it is entirely on the shoulders of your own mental state