Riot Games has launched the LoL event “Pride 2021” to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community. However, fans of League of Legends notice: Oops, in Turkey the event looks quite different. The event is supposed to celebrate gays, lesbians, queer people, transgender people, and other orientations, but in Turkey, it’s only about colors? In Russia, there is no mention of the event at all.
This is what the event is about: “Pride 2021” celebrates the “International Day Against Homo-, Bi-, Inter- and Transphobia” on May 17. Riot Games started celebrating this day in 2018 and supports the movement in 2021 with events in League of Legends and other games.
Riot Games says: The Pride event in LoL features symbols, homecoming animations, stickers, and even a guardian to support the LGBTQIA+ community in all their games.
In 2021, there is the “Rainbow Poro” symbol in LoL.
Especially the rainbow as a symbol of the Pride movement is in the foreground of the event.
In Turkey, “Pride” becomes “the beautifully colorful spring”
This is the controversy: A LoL player noticed that while the Turkish version of LoL brings the “Pride” event, it does not call it a “Pride” event. In Turkey, all references to “Pride” or the “LGBTQIA+” community have disappeared from the game.
There, the game is marketed as a “Color” event.
While the Pride aspect of the event is emphasized on Western sites, also in Japan and Korea, there is no mention of it on the Turkish site. Here, the event is sold as a “spring” event, where one should celebrate how beautiful the various colors of spring are. Here is a screenshot from the Turkish site:
When asked by the Turkish branch of Riot Games, the player only learned: “A lot of time was spent researching to localize the event.”
This is what Riot says now: In a statement to Dotesports, Riot Games explained:
“Our main priority was to ensure that players could experience the content in as many places as possible. To comply with local laws, we changed the labels for certain regions where we are releasing the event.
We hope that we will be able to celebrate the Pride event worldwide in the future.”
Riot Games
Where else is it still forbidden? According to research by MeinMMO, the event doesn’t even appear on the Russian League of Legends homepage. The news announcing the event is completely missing.
In Russia, there has been a law since 2013 that punishes any positive expression about homosexuality in the presence of children or through media.
In Turkey, references to LGBTQIA+ are only allowed “from 18” – They want to protect children
This is what it’s about: The BBC reported in December 2020 that a ministry in Turkey has decided that anything related to LGBTQ or the “rainbow” can only be distributed on pages that are for 18 years and older (via bbc).
They believe that the development of children could be endangered if they come into contact with these topics while they are still minors.
To avoid a ban on the event, Riot Games has therefore adapted or completely suspended the “Pride” event in regions where such laws exist.
A similar conflict occurred with Blizzard in 2016 when they portrayed the Overwatch heroine “Tracer” as lesbian. This worked in many places – but not in Russia:
Overwatch: First homosexual heroine revealed – In Russia the comic is blocked
