Garena Reverses Initial Decision to Restrict LGBT Players from League of Legends Events

[Shawn Zipay]

Yesterday, word broke that Garena had instituted a hard and fast rule that each League of Legends team in Southeast Asia and surrounding areas could only have one LGBT member. Today, Garena realized their mistake and have reversed their initial decision.

Our initial ruling on LGBT player restrictions within the Iron Solari League has created a lot of good discussion and debate over the past 24 hours. After discussing the ruling with our partners and re-examining our approach, we have decided to remove these restrictions completely. This means that any player who self-identifies as female will be allowed to participate. We sincerely apologize for any offense we caused to the LGBT and gaming communities.

Our original intent when we put together this tournament was to promote diversity in the competitive gaming community. Hence, we are grateful to our players who have consistently provided their feedback to help us learn and improve as we strive to develop an inclusive gaming environment for all. We’ll also be keeping our promise of having an open dialogue with all parties as we plan this and future events.

We hope you will tune in to support these awesome teams and players in this upcoming tournament.

Garena Philippines eSports

It's nice to see that they saw the error of their ways and reversed their decision.

(via Garena)