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."
"At the leadership thing I was at," he continues, "- and I'm not kidding - at one point on stage they were talking about how they didn't know what the word 'goon' meant, and then they started talking about what 'gooning' meant."
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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