To RiotRepertoir and the rest of Riot regarding your attitude to your customers.

You recently commented on one of your customers concerns with this:

"It can be difficult to have meaningful conversation with people when their opening statements toward you are immediately negative, accusatory, or passive aggressive. I go in and out of spending a good amount of time on Boards when I'm not crunching hard on projects (as I am currently with Taric and immobile mages), but even when I'm looking for meaningful conversation to have, a large number of threads are quickly filtered because they come off as hostile. I personally am not looking for sugar coated questions, but I do think a topic like "Hey RiotRepertoir, Kog'Maw seems to be performing poorly in xyz category. What are your plans with Kog'Maw moving forward?" probably has a more meaningful conversation behind it than "Why is Kog'Maw still basically shafted?" The latter is pretty passive aggressive and doesn't really even begin to describe the conversation you want to have about Kog'Maw. Questions like these usually just come off as someone being angry and not actually seeking discussion.

I'm off to work. I can try to pop back later if I get a few minutes."

I've commented on that thread with the same info, but I felt it was necessary to address in a thread devoted to the topic of how you treat your customers.

As a company, Riot get's to dictate the conversations it has, that's for sure. In one sense, you guys have the power to communicate on your terms. However, your response, which illustrates a mindset riot has, seems to forget one thing about business - "the customer is always right"

That phrase doesn't mean that the customer is actually always right, it means that if you're in a business who's paycheck gets written because a customer purchased a product or service, then you better treat them like their opinions are valuable. If I walk into a retail store angry about a defective product, they don't say "Your comments seem passive aggressive sir, I think I'm just going to walk away and not deal with you". That would be unheard of and asinine, because that isn't how you treat a customer.

Riot, and judging from your comment you as well, simply doesn't understand this. Sometimes customers are going to be passionate or upset about a product or service that you messed up, and if you want people to continue being customers, you should address their concerns anyway politely. You have the right to treat your customers like they are beneath you having to speak to their concerns, but don't be surprised if your customers hate you in return, or take their business elsewhere. You guys might be so cocky that you think you can treat your customers however you want and they will keep playing, but remember that with great pride comes a great fall.

Before you say "but league is free!" to justify you treating customers like they are beneficiaries of charity, lets all put the cards on the table. League is free as a business model, not as a charity. League chose to be ftp with microtransactions as a means to make money, not to be charitable, and they have made a butt load of money doing it. These players are who pay your salary, regardless of your companies business model, don't ever forget that.

You probably won't read this, but if you do, understand that it's time to start treating the players like they matter to you instead of acting like you are doing them a favor by having a game. Sometimes customers are jerks, sometimes they are unreasonable, and sometimes they are flat wrong. You don't have to do what they ask every time, and you don't have to take endless abuse, but you better start treating them with at least a modicum of respect if you expect them to continue being customers and making league the most played game in the world. In other words, don't forget who's money is on your check.