The New Riot Games Allegations

Hopefully, their predatory gacha skins will allow them to hire a team that can actually make better skins and emotes!

Who pronounces Sivir in any other way to what the video did?

I am 100% Okay with sloppy quality control, but am not okay with AI replacing people.

reading the match chat is the funniest shit ever

-1

mistake or not, at this point riot should have a higher quality control and maybe even a division with the sole focus of quality in all forms of it

I mean, Riot does legally own all fanart made for League of Legends, so they technically can't steal what is rightfully theirs...

why would anyone believe a word Riot says at this point. i mean really.

Finally I have an excuse to leave lol

If this company really thinks they can just remove the artists that made them and make AI do the work instead, they are hilariously mistaken. Nobody's going to want that soulless crap.

Nice dude you grew a beard, going away from the transgender teenager look for a bit

the ai video looks much better, lol

Sag aftra is on strike from league. Don't spend money if you care about the unions

Riot games is NOT beating the allegations. Idk how no one is talking about this but Riot's Senior Principal Technical Artist job posting is being paid $80K MORE on average than their senior environmental concept artist job posting, and it very explicitly will use AI. This is available to read on their careers listings page, but here is the worst of it:

- Working with leaders across the company you will establish core future-facing workflows and a pipeline vision driven by product needs, guide ethical and effective use of AI tools, and establish a path forward to deliver these features to creatives everywhere

- Lead efforts to optimize rendering processes, shading, and lighting setups through automation tools or AI-driven solutions

AI and Automation Integration:

Identify opportunities to integrate AI and machine learning (ML) tools to automate repetitive tasks, such as asset generation, procedural content creation, texture generation, or animation.
Evaluate, then build the capabilities to prototype and implement AI-driven software to enhance productivity and artistic output, ensuring compatibility with the existing art pipelines.
Develop strategies for the deployment of AI tools across various stages of production, from concept art to final rendering.

Research and Development:

Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI, ML, and automation within the art and entertainment industries, identifying emerging trends and technologies that can enhance production quality and efficiency.
Partner with the internal Production AI team to lead R&D efforts to prototype new tools, workflows, and techniques that can be integrated into future projects.

Not even hidden. This position is meant to work with the R&D position that Riot got backlash for that people claim could be used for other things. This makes it very explicit the purpose of that R&D job listing. I can't believe Riot games off all companies was on of the first to go down this path in the name of "efficiency", and then claim "ethical ai use" when that is an oxymoron. Lay off hundreds, mostly artists, and then post a job listing starting at 230K a year that is meant to "optimize workflow efficiency". I don't see this trend stopping any time ever, and it's so disheartening as an artist to see an IP so artistically driven begin to go down this path. WTF is wrong with riot????

dude, as much as i want to believe in riots intergity here.
They have become the exact company to use AI in the last few years.
From a skin costing 500 usd, to a gatcha system for skins that look worse than some of the 10 usd skins.
Then you factor in all those lay offs, if my math is correct (feel free to correct my numbers) Is somewhere between 500 to 700 people in just that last year and a half.
They only care about money and E sports, this game no longer has a casual feel and every patch note leaves you questioning why some things aren't just left alone. The addition of a new monster that has a 50% chance to spawn top or bot, that pushes rift hearld out to 15 min. and Barron to 25min. means they want games to hold people hostage longer by putting 'game changing' objectives farther out.
then to add insult to injury, skins are collectively getting worse, from splash arts looking identical (like the ezreal one) to Katarina getting two skins in almost one month, then to Ezreal getting two this year; vrs. champions who haven't gotten anything since release. (my example is Hwei, but there are champions who haven't gotten a skin in a few years; a good few actually)
The same champions getting skins, half the time they don't even look good. (allow me to remind you of the newest infernal skins) To buffs and nerfs randomly tapping champions out of new play styles simply because its becoming popular. Then factor in their heavy push on the gatcha system. Then all those layoffs. And you have a company that will cut corners anyway they can to make more money off of their player base at any turn.
and thats BEFORE I mention Legends of Runtera, which they kneecapped this year, then decided to compete with other card games by making theirs a physical card game, and out right copying Magics play style, down to Commander.

Riot isn't going to change, because for as much as people banned Ahri after that 500usd skin, that still made them tons of money.
This is riot now. A greedy, money driven billion dollar company, who is actively looking for ways to suck more money out of their players pockets at any chance.

(edit, saw someone else mention that they removed the ability to re-roll skins in the loot system, after they made it way harder to get chests unless you main certain champions through out the season that change depending on who you play. Just another example i wanted to add.)

I always called her Seh-veer? Not Si-ver

I hope league of legends dies and another waves based moba comes out like please why does no gaming company has the balls to compete with a very sick king (current league of legends)

The 6 finger image of toph is not from Atla, rival!

the way the voice actor said sivir is how i pronounce it, and every french people too, so idk

no way!? huge multimillion dollar company bad!?!?! who could have seen this coming?!

ezreal looking like ezreal is crazy. fire that artist imo.

The voiceover guy sounds way better than phreak tbh

Fuck the real artists, now we only need sculpturers to make the AI better. I always love AI works better, they're not biased and somehow always create hot characters lmao

they're going the gacha route, the need to pay real artists

There are just so poses you can draw. You can have a full team with certain girls and all of them have the same pose

All skins should be Gacha .. EZ Win for Rito ~ 😎🍻

Base syndra, Ruined shyvana, psyops kayle all use the exact same pose and facial structure, still mad they updated syndras completely unique and cool splash art to just be a copy paste splash that looks uglier

im an artist and dont see AI as negative, if used correctly.

I dont think AI was used but it shows that even if it was used their quality department isnt good enough to notice it / doesnt care enough to notice it / Someone at the top doesnt care and just wants to get paid in which case theyre on a slippy slope to the same shit blizz did with their Multiplayer game. Maybe in 2 years maybe in 20 when the MMO is out and losing players but this is a blatant example of money being more important than quality.

"We all know her as Severe not Sivir" bruh....have you spoken to maybe any of the EU players? Not a single person calls her "Severe" here, or at least not a single person that i have spoken to since 2016 to now

Lol Sivir is correct in 1st pronunciation! 😂

I think it's also indicative of bad players in the art industry. I used to think AI was going to be a good thing that made art better and easier to make for artists, but now I'm starting to see why artists are so against it. because of the unethical/amoral who would use it for the money. What we need is much more rigorous checks/quality control to ensure art theft doesn't occur, and that any "artist" that is found to submit artwork that is theft is immediately blacklisted from the entire industry and can never get a commission again.

I just feel bad about the artists. More mistakes and shortcuts are popping up, because. Well at least I believe to be because of the layoffs. I noticed in valorant the art style changed and what you know it the person in charge of maintaining the art style used left the company. As an artist of ten years who was inspired by the works of riot. I gotta say this greatly saddens me.

I mean. This speaks to three things, with one of those three things being a split reality depending on the actual truth which we'll never know.

1st Thing : Riot is greedy as Hell and has actively repeatedly put profits over service multiple times now. Limited the Arcane animation based on cost is understandable because 250 million is a lot of money, but also I think ultimately Arcane never needed to cost that much or be as artistically pretty as it is to tell its story or sell to the audience. Beyond that, the cancellation of Ultimate Skins, the degradation of Ultimate Skins over time, the introduction of the Exalted Skins & Gacha System, the fact they've never actually offered that much in terms of F2P rewards in their game compared to things like Marvel Rivals, Mortal Kombat, Honor of Kings, Heroes of the Storm & even Genshin Impact. (Sadly, this has led to games like HOTS being too generous, not profitable/popular enough, and being closed down by Blizzard; Who has not been so generous in their other games.) [Disclaimer: I'm not saying Genshin Impact is a generous game, rather GI being more generous than LOL is an indictment of LOL.] And now adding that the Jinx gacha appears every time you go into the loot menu and that they don't allow you to see the price of the Jinx gacha without putting money into the system, especially went let's be real, the Jinx Gacha is targeting newcomers to the game through Arcane who may not actually know how heinous the pricetags are in League, is legitimately scummy as Hell. Also the amount of layoffs is absurd, especially when it's targeting the creative minds behind the game including most of the original lore writers and artists and character designers.

2nd Thing : Riot's Quality Control is absolutely trash regardless. Because even in a proposed reality of people using AI art, which I'm not inherently against, though I do think any company as big as Riot should be commissioning/training their own AI with their own artwork to avoid legal issues and art theft, or that the real future of AI media generation will come through a conjugation of media companies resource sharing on an AI trained with their own IPs (something which any company making more than X a year should be legally bound to). All AI should still have a quality control process, as well as having that AI generation led and edited by an actual artist with proficiency in ai training and who is capable of manually editing/fixing any such mistakes. So whether or not the Samira emote IS a real artist's work, or is an error within AI generation, it should still have been put through quality control and fixed.

3rd Thing : There's two realities at play here. Either Riot has been caught in the act too many times and are proverbial serial liars that they are using AI Generated Media as part of their marketing, because it IS suspicious as Hell that they just. Keep. Getting. Caught. "Caught". Honestly, I think if they hadn't laid off 90% of their artistic workforce (See: 1st Thing.) they'd probably just admit to it and I don't think people would care provided they were still paying the artists / the artists were vetting the AI process themselves. But they've backed themselves into a corner now by firing their artists and taking an anti-AI stance against Netflix. The other reality, if Riot is indeed telling the truth (and to quote a certain space pilot 'I don't trust anyone who makes more money than I do'), is that the war on AI has gone too far and that people are starting to genuinely target/drag real artists for simple, innocent mistakes, and are looking for fights to pick all in the name of defending artistic security. Which, if people don't like Art AI, they're more than welcome to not support it, but it should probably be directed at proven AI projects rather than every imperfect piece of artistic media. To be honest, if Riot is telling the truth, than the fact that AI Errors are no longer distinguishable from Human Errors is kind of wild.

do not defend riot devs please for the love of god do become another corporate sellout.

They are lying.

Riot is using AI.

The sivir thing, didn't sound like ai. Then you know what I did, I put Sivir into 15 different text to speech engines and not a single one pronounced it like the voice actor. People are too dumb these days.

The MMO will be Riots grave.

dislike, fake call,

I agree with almost all of this video but i do have to say: I and almost every other English/English speaking person i personally know, pronounce 'Sivir' as 'Severe' (Sivire). Although i'm not saying this excuses any AI being used at all, just wanted to point out that some people say names differently. Fuck AI it sucks

My opinion? If you care about this stuff, you're a terminally online loser.

Not going to lie but it seems like people are just hating on AI for no reason. A valid reason to hate on AI is that the quality is poor. But for stuff like the voiceover stuff, just say it sounds annoying or something. Feels like if people think it is AI then suddenly it is bad but if the same thing is done by a human then suddenly it is okay. And alot of my Eastern European friends do call it Sivir instead of how it is pronounced normally. Really does just seem overblown and not that big of a deal.

They implemented korean mmo gambling....why are yall acting like we are "catching" them doing shit LMAO

Man I remember when AI wasn't around and not a damn person paid this much attention to every piece of art that comes out now. You guys are just looking for something to argue over.

link to the twitter you crop?

who cares about AI use , fix the damn client and focus on balancing the game

crazy how theres crying over drawings