Cursing to (and at) yourself while playing is nothing new. It’s a quick, convenient way to let out your frustrations. Cursing and being just plain abusive towards absolute strangers is a different story, though. It’s completely uncalled for, and Riot Games is doing something about it.
Riot Games is taking baby steps towards reforming the less pleasant players of their popular MOBA, League of Legends. They’re putting a new system in place (just rolled out in North America) that allows players to report offensive behavior committed by other players by linking evidence of the behavior. Riot believes that the sooner the player is made aware of their negative behavior, the bigger the chance of reform. According to the update on the League of Legends website: “Your reports help the instant feedback system understand and punish the kind of verbal harassment the community actively rejects: homophobia, racism, sexism, death threats, and other forms of excessive abuse.” With verbal harassment rampant in online games, having this system would be refreshing.
Player-reported offenses sounds like it could potentially be abused. Riot has thought of this, and the reports will be checked by the system to see if they’re false. Reports will be examined to determine if the behavior does not live up to the community’s behavioral standards, and if found to be deserving of punishment, the system will send a reform card (a report card showing the offense and the corresponding punishment) via email. The player behavior team will still supervise this sorting for the first few thousand reports, and they’re hoping that it can be rolled out to all regions soon.
So far, the confirmed penances are two-week bans and permanent bans. This is essentially a time-out, and while some may argue that time-outs never helped kids, most League of Legends players are no longer small children who are incapable of analyzing their behavior. In the future, Riot Games plans to upgrade the system to also reward positive play. This new instant feedback system has plenty of potential, and could do a lot to improve players’ in-game experience. Would you want this to be available in your region?
