League of Legends leadership just got a crash course in horniness when "someone started explaining what 'gooning' meant: "I shouldn't tell you this"

League of Legends Yunara — (Image credit: Riot Games)

League of Legends is far from immune from skin-based fan service, but things might have taken a step up after the concept of 'gooning' was discussed at a recent leadership conference.

During a recent stream, Steven 'Mortdog' Mortimer, gameplay director on strategy spin-off Teamfight Tactics, revealed a snippet from a recent leadership event he'd attended. "I shouldn't tell you this," he admitted, "but I'm going to tell you this and if Riot gets mad at me for it, that's fine."

Why are we talking about this LOL?! | TFT K.O. Coliseum | Teamfight Tactics #teamfighttactics #tft - YouTube

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If you, like the sadly-unnamed figures on stage at Mortdog's leadership event, believe that a 'goon' still means a surly Batman villain or that a 'gooner' is a fanatical follower of Arsenal football club, then it's safe to say that the internet has moved on without you.

In recent years, the term has come to refer to a particularly intensive approach to self-pleasure, but can also be diluted to a sense of general horniness that's often used to describe particularly scantily clad fictional characters.

League of Legends has a dubiously large roster of attractive female characters, and it's no stranger to the occasional horny cosmetic (unlike Marvel Rivals, apparently). Many years ago, it put otherwise stalwart warrior Riven in a Playboy bunny costume (a move it's since attempted to retcon), but even new champion Yunara, who only arrived in-game last month, set hearts aflutter with her hot springs-themed launch skin.

Unfortunately, Mortdog doesn't provide enough background about exactly who was up on stage to provide a full picture. In all likelihood, we're talking about someone from an internal Riot HR team, or even an outside consultant, but I do think it would be extremely funny if this were the conversational topic of Riot's CEO or one of its co-founders. Either way, apparently "the context was fine, and it was funny," but Mortdog does admit that "out of context, it was hilarious."

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I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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