In an effort to reduce poor sportsmanship in League of Legends, Riot is implementing a ranked restriction system to cull excessively negative players. In a forum post to the official LoL board, admin Riot Shalkar detailed the upcoming changes, revealing that users who have been earmarked as abusive will not be allowed to join the queue for any ranked games, instead having to complete a number of run-throughs on Normal Draft to get back in. Players will also be subject to chat restrictions, and any who have not improved their behavior at the time of their final evaluation following a trial time-out period will not be permitted to re-join the rest of the LoL population. Additionally:
"…Ranked Rewards should reward positive sportsmanship just as much as they reward great play, so the most negative players who are Ranked Restricted at the end of the season will be ineligible to earn ranked end of season rewards such as the loading screen borders or Victorious Morgana champion skin. While the majority of players will not be affected by this ruling, we wanted to message it well in advance so that players concerned about their behavior have more than enough time to adjust and reform before the end of the season."
The system has already been tested successfully in beta and has now been implemented in NA and EU. Depending on the results of the live testing from these regions, Riot plans to add more global regions as time goes on.
League of Legends is currently one of the most popular games in the world, with 27 million active daily players. Their ranked restriction system will likely serve as a model for other developers and publishers looking to reduce hostile online user interactions.
