Riot starts getting tough on toxic LoL players with “instant” bans

Riot starts getting tough on toxic LoL players with “instant” bans

Strict penalties for racism, homophobia strengthen attempts at player “reform.”

Kyle Orland – Jul 22, 2014 10:42 am | 210

Just give Riot an excuse to use the banhammer...

League of Legends developer Riot Games is ready to take a tougher stance with the toxic players that are ruining the gameplay experience for many of the game’s more than 27 million players. Riot Lead Designer of Social Systems Jeffrey Lin announced via Twitter yesterday that, starting immediately, “players that show extreme toxicity (intentional feeding or racism, etc) will be instantly 14-day or permabanned.”

In a a follow-up post on Reddit, Lin notes that things like “death threats [and] homophobia” will also draw the ire of the new stricter player moderation. Further, players that publicly complain about these bans will now be “named and shamed” through sharing the chat logs that led to the ban.

The new banning system will be largely automated, and players caught up in the dragnet will be told they are being banned “until Year 2500,” though such permanent bans will have to be reviewed by a human before going into effect. After testing the new moderation system one server at a time, Riot plans to roll the program out across the entire game.

This is a pretty big community management turnaround for Riot, which has in the past made a point of trying to reform and reintroduce problem players into the League of Legends community rather than just going straight for the banhammer. The company has taken a scientific approach to trying to correct disruptive player behavior through player-run tribunals and “reform cards” that let players know exactly why they are being punished.

Riot frequently cites statistics showing a distinct reduction in reports of bad behavior after rolling out these gentler forms of community management. But the tribunal system alone apparently wasn’t enough to fix the problem of player toxicity. “The key here is that for most players, reform approaches are quite effective,” Lin wrote on reddit. “But, for a number of players, reform attempts have been very unsuccessful, which forces us to remove some of these players from League entirely.”

The announcement has already attracted a lot of negative attention from the expected corners. “It is somewhat amusing that the people angry at this are openly spamming me with racist slurs,” Lin tweeted in a follow-up yesterday evening.

In the last few months, a number of high-profile, pro-level League of Legends players have been temporarily banned for violating the game’s “Summoner’s Code.”