Riot's New Valorant Agent Is Non-Binary — But Players Already Compiled a List of 12+ LGBTQ+ Champions in League, and Yes, a Robot Made the Cut

Riot Games just dropped a new Valorant agent called Cleo for the upcoming mobile version, and the headlining feature isn't a flashy ability kit — it's that Cleo is non-binary. The post landed on NGA (one of China's largest gaming forums) with a succinct caption: "Riot's going full woke now."

But the comment section turned into a mass "we've seen this before" moment. The top-voted replies were almost unanimously dismissive: "Standard Western studio behavior" (欧美厂商日常), "This is news?" (这也算瓜？), "A US game company adding LGBTQ+ content — how is that even a headline?" NGA veterans have clearly developed a thick skin to Riot's DEI playbook.

Long-time players dug into Riot's history to show this is nothing new. Commenters pointed out that even ancient League of Legends champions like Taric (now called the Shield of Valoran) and Nidalee were openly coded as LGBTQ+ long ago. Neeko was explicitly written as a lesbian, and K'Sante was described as "the heavy-hitter" (重量级) of representation. One commenter dropped a spicy detail: Riot allegedly faced a gender discrimination lawsuit, settled for a massive sum, and then went all-in on DEI content. "Suddenly a bunch of old champions got their sexualities diversified, and they stopped releasing sexy female characters for a long time."

The real showstopper was a comment in reply #14 — one absolute madlad went full wiki mode and compiled a comprehensive list of every LGBTQ+ champion in League of Legends: Varus (two gay men sharing a body with a Darkin demon), Neeko (lesbian), Leona and Diana (a lesbian couple), Nami (bisexual in an open relationship), K'Sante (gay), Vi and Caitlyn (lesbian couple), Nidalee (allegedly lesbian — pursued by Neeko), Lee Sin (allegedly bisexual), Taliyah (transgender), Taric (narcissistic??), and Blitzcrank (robot-sexual). That last entry blew up the comments — "Wait, a ROBOT?" (机器人是什么鬼).

Reply #19 added some lore context on the Nidalee-Neeko ship: Nidalee wasn't originally written as lesbian, but after finding Neeko and letting her stay in her tribe, Neeko eventually pursued her. Nidalee initially saw her as a little sister, but after Neeko left to continue her own journey, Nidalee realized her true feelings. The commenter also noted fairly: "Honestly, Riot doing this isn't really drama — there are plenty of straight champions too, and even more with zero romance in their storylines at all."

Some commenters shifted the conversation to competitors: one mentioned NetEase's upcoming game Apocalypse Action (天启行动), which allegedly clones Valorant, suggesting NetEase should "hurry up and use this to dunk on Riot and Tencent." Others predicted that Tencent's China server localization would handle the content delicately — a nod to how Chinese publishers often modify or downplay LGBTQ+ elements. As for Overwatch 2? One player said THAT's the real offender — "The designs are just ugly, honestly" (太丑了实在是).

Overall, Cleo's non-binary identity barely registered as controversy on NGA. The prevailing attitude was more like: "Yeah, it's Riot, what did you expect." What people actually enjoyed was the encyclopedia-tier compilation of LGBTQ+ champions across all of Riot's games — the fact that someone catalogued a robot's sexual orientation is peak internet archaeology, and honestly, that's the real content here.