Riot Updates

How the research is made

Research Methodology

Riot Updates starts with attributable records, preserves dates and uncertainty, and treats publication as an editorial decision rather than a data-export step.

Last reviewed

Method in one paragraph

Use the strongest available source for each kind of claim; state what the source establishes and no more; attach a date to facts that can change; distinguish allegations, settlements, findings, and commentary; and leave an uncertainty visible when the public record cannot resolve it.

The supplied research package is incomplete and its validation record is stale The package manifest describes 117 files, but most manifest-listed paths are not present at those original locations in the working package. Some surviving files were flattened or renamed, while many listed files are absent. The included validation report and checksums therefore do not validate the directory now used to build this site. Riot Updates does not present that older validation result as proof that the current corpus is complete or unchanged.
Public pages are independently curated The website does not automatically publish every claim, row, or draft in the supplied corpus. Material is selected, scoped, and rewritten for the public page. A corpus entry is not evidence by itself; the cited underlying record is.

Source order

No single hierarchy fits every question, but Riot Updates generally prefers the following:

  1. Audited filings, court records, regulator records, and official rules for dated ownership, legal procedure, orders, and formal requirements.
  2. Contemporaneous first-party records for what a company released, announced, changed, or said about its own plans.
  3. Contemporary independent reporting for events, employee actions, allegations, and context not fully recorded in a filing or company post.
  4. Academic or technical research when the method and scope support the claim being made.
  5. Retrospectives for early history that lacks a complete contemporary record, with the retrospective nature kept visible.

First-party material is often the best record of an announcement or release date. It is not independent confirmation of a disputed motive, outcome, cultural condition, market position, or claim of superiority. In the corrected controlled Riot Games bibliography, 63 of 100 entries are Riot-published first-party sources. That concentration is disclosed so readers can judge both the strength and the limits of the evidence base.

Claim language

The wording of a page should match the state of the evidence:

  • Verified means a strong direct record, or multiple compatible records, supports the statement.
  • Strongly supported means credible evidence supports the statement but the public record is not fully dispositive.
  • Inferred marks an editorial conclusion drawn from cited facts, not something a source directly announced.
  • Contested means credible accounts disagree.
  • Alleged identifies an assertion, report, or pleading that is not presented as an established general finding.
  • Unsupported or unknown means the available evidence does not justify a factual conclusion.

A lack of public evidence is not proof that an event did or did not happen. Silence about a project is not, by itself, evidence of cancellation.

Dates and changing facts

Riot Updates separates an event date from a publication date, access date, effective date, and last-verified date. This matters for changing facts such as leadership, employee counts, job listings, development status, server availability, release plans, and ownership disclosures.

Product states are also kept separate. “Active development ended,” “servers online,” “offline play available,” “delisted,” and “shut down” describe different conditions. A page should not collapse them into a more dramatic label.

Numbers and comparisons

Metrics are published with their unit, population, geography, time period, and source where those details are known. Registrations, monthly active users, daily active users, peak concurrency, and broadcast audience are not interchangeable. Estimates remain labeled as estimates, and a number reported by a company is not described as independently measured unless a separate source supports that description.

Complaints, allegations, agency statements, settlements, consent decrees, judgments, and admissions are different kinds of records. Riot Updates attributes claims to the speaker or document, reports procedural posture, and does not turn a settlement into an admission unless the controlling document says so. Later orders or compliance records should be checked before describing a legal matter as current or complete.

Automation

Automation may assist with formatting and mechanical checks such as link consistency, duplicate identifiers, row counts, or missing fields. It is never evidence. A generated summary, automated label, search snippet, or model output cannot establish a fact and cannot replace the underlying source. Public wording remains an editorial responsibility.

Updates and corrections

Time-sensitive pages identify a research cutoff or last-checked date. A later update should add a new dated evidence state rather than silently rewriting the historical one. When a factual error is confirmed, the visible page should be corrected; a material change should also identify what changed and when.

See the editorial and corrections policy for publication standards and the source library for the controlled bibliography and supplemental live checks.