Yesterday, Garena issued a press release stating that it would be limiting the amount of LGBT females per team in the all female League of Legends tournament called Iron Solari. There was quite a bit of a shitstorm and earlier today, they decided to reverse their decision and remove the restrictions as long as the players identified as female.

Garena’s press release below:

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

Good on Riot for immediately rectifying Garena’s decision. It’s always very cool whenever big companies like Riot react quickly, decisively and sensitively to issues that the community feels strongly towards. Once again, they prove that they are a reputable company who I have no problem in supporting.

Tags: garena, homophobia, iron solari, league of legends