League of Legends: Riot Games Publicly Addresses “Game-Ruining” Behavior

The community is torn at the state of solo queue.

In recent days, Riot Games have been receiving a lot of flack for their flagship title League of Legends. Former professional player and content creator Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani posted a YouTube video called “The Sad State Of Solo Q” and also shared it via Twitter. The video addresses Voyboy’s experiences with the toxicity found within the game.

“The Sad State of Solo Q”

In the 10 minute confession, Voyboy tackles the growing issue of negative behavior within League of Legends and it’s exponential increase over the last few years. He explains that he has personally spoken to Riot Games in the past after having been invited to their headquarters in 2018. He shared that during this time, he spoke to Riot about his concerns with negativity in the game. Voyboy focused on griefers and the impact that these players have on the game’s overall quality.

High ranked players who stream like Voyboy are in a position to show off the game’s perceived peak level of talent. Where the problem lies is that these same influencers and subjected to people who intentionally ruin games. Even worse, they do so while broadcasting to a live audience of thousands of people. Quoting Voyboy, he says that “it's a representation of how the general player base perceives and treats ranked solo queue in League of Legends.” He continues with a sentiment of feeling defeated by griefers who have become more common and do not fear punishment.

This video spread like wildfire among the League of Legends community. It targeted Riot’s lack of action against their negative population of players. People across the ranked ladder shared their experiences and poured support for Voyboy. This incident has seemingly come full circle since Jason “videogamedunkey” Gastrow, the poster boy content creator of the game quit four years prior for the same reasons.

Riot’s Response

Riot Games put out an official statement today after the widespread of the video. In the post, Riot Meddler acknowledges the conversation going on about toxicity. The tl;dr of the update is that Riot will be prioritizing addressing “game-ruining behavior” more often and improving their systems. New additions were shared such as introducing reporting during the Champion Select phase. As time goes on, Riot will continue to create a more responsive system to detect intentional feeding and pseudo afking.

In short, Riot understands that their lack of activity (or transparency of the topic) has finally reached a boiling point. Now, they’re forced to address the issue. Simply put, their systems are easy to navigate and just aren’t up to the standards necessary to protect their players. Improving report feedback as well by improving notifications are the first steps to be launched. These have already been implemented in North America, giving positive reinforcement to players deterring from negative behavior and increasing clarity on reports sent.

Though it’ll take some time, Riot has started taking the necessary steps to tackle toxicity and to protect its player base. It’s taken a while, but there’s no running from the subject now. Thankfully, Riot is being transparent and are looking to increase their action against game-ruining behavior for the future.

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