Kicking it into high gear a few weeks before Pride Month,Riot Gameswill be getting into the spirit by celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, or IDAHOTB. This will take the form of a new update on a special Fluft that will spread beyond theLeague of Legendsuniverseand into the developer’s other titles likeValorant.
The day of Pride awareness has been celebrated since 2005 and was specifically chosen to take place on May 17 to commemorate the removal of Homosexuality from the World Health Organization’s International Classifications of Diseases. Since then, people within the community and public figures likeRiot Gameshave celebrated the IDAHOTB in a continued effort to fight these types of hate.
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For 2021’s celebration of IDAHOTB, Riot Games has decided to start rolling out the Rainbow Fluft across all games in the developer’s library. This means that players can represent themselves with whichever Pride flag they identify with across everything fromLeague of LegendstoLegends ofRuneterrato evenTeamfight Tactics. Aside from the flags, it looks like Riot Games is planning to roll out even more free content andfor-sale content to titles likeLeague of Legends, with proceeds going to support Pride related causes.
The purchasable, Pride-themed merch specifically will start rolling out at the start of Pride Month on June 1 and will continue through July 31. As Riot Games has done before, the developer is partnering with It Gets Better Project for the fourth year in a row, with 100% of net proceeds from the merch going towards the LGBTQ+ youth organization for the course of the two month rollout. Fans can also expect to see events andupdates in games likeValorantor online more directly among the community in the coming month as the IDAHOTB and Pride Month celebrations continue moving forward.
According to Riot Games, the company is committed to the type of awareness risen on IDAHOTB and through the developer’s season of Pride that will continue through Pride Month. It’s certainly a stance that players have appreciated, especially the LGBTQ+ community members among Riot’s fans, who have responded positively to this announcement. Fighting against hate of any kind is an admirable quality for a company asinfluential in its industry as Riot Games, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see more developers begin to make similar moves as June approaches.
