A Riot employee has ignited a firestorm of backlash after saying he’d “be gucci” if infamous former League of Legends streamer Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp dies “from a coke overdose or testicular cancer from all the steroids.”
Rutledge made the comments in the League of Legends subreddit’s Discord channel earlier today. Riot famously banned Tyler1—known as the “most toxic player in NA”—about a year ago after several high-profile instances of trolling, flaming, and overall bad behavior.
Rutledge’s Discord conversation was uploaded to Reddit this morning, and at first, he valiantly tried to defend himself.
After a while, though, he stopped digging his heels in and apologized.
The one person the community probably expected to sling the most insults was Tyler1 himself. Instead, he remained levelheaded:
About seven hours after the post first hit Reddit, Riot finally swept in for damage control. “To be very clear here: what was said is NOT okay, and we take it extremely seriously,” a Riot staffer said on Reddit. “I’d like to apologize on behalf of Riot to both Tyler1 and the community for this.”
The staffer added that the company “will be taking action internally to address this” but didn’t elaborate on what that action might entail because “it would not be appropriate to go into specifics here.”
Update Oct. 2 7:37pm CT: This story has been edited for clarity.
