Riot Games is tackling the ongoing problem of toxic, offensive behaviour by some of its League of Legends player base head on.
Jeffrey Lin, Riot’s lead social designer announced over Twitter that players found guilty of ”extreme toxicity” will be subject to fourteen-day bans, stretching to permanent bans for repeat or particularly extreme offenders.
“Today, players that show extreme toxicity (intentional feeding or racism, etc) will be instantly 14-day or permabanned in #LeagueOfLegends”, wrote Lin.
Those worried about the potential for unfair bans were reassured - Riot will study each permanent ban case individually, according to Lin. ”If this #leagueoflegends initiative is effective, we’ll be rolling it out more permanently. Every permaban case is reviewed.”
He also went into more detail on the new stance in a Reddit post. ”Today is the start of tests where we’ll be using a new machine learning approach + Player Support manual reviews to target extreme cases of toxicity (such as intentional feeding, racism, death threats, homophobia, etc) and handing out pretty severe penalties such as 14-day or permanent bans. Players that get permanent bans will see a ban code of 2500 during these tests.”
While in the past Riot has shied away from ”naming and shaming” banned users, Lin says that the team has decided that transparency is key to the player base trusting in the new initiative. Therefore if they receive complaints about a particular ban, Riot will publish chat-logs of the incident to explain their decision.
Essentially, if you’re a League of Legends player who delights in being a horrible little bastard, it’s time to start taking Wheaton’s Law a bit more seriously; ”Don’t be a dick”.
