In mid-August, in front of an audience of his own employees, Marc Merrill, a co-founder of Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, admitted fault. According to two sources watching, he apologised, his voice choked up, and he began to cry. Twelve years after Riot’s founding, it had become clear to its employees, League of Legends’ community, and the public at large that Riot was not the utopian games company it had set out to be.

After Merrill left the stage, the company’s top brass filed in to answer staffers’ questions. One of them was Scott Gelb, Riot’s chief operating officer, the subject of an open secret at the behemoth gaming company: For years, Gelb had been known to fart on, “ball-tap,” and, sometimes, hump colleagues for comedic effect.