Riot Bans League of Legends Pros For "Toxic Behavior"

[Steven Bogos]

Riot Bans League of Legends Pros For "Toxic Behavior"

Two League of Legends pros have been suspended from professional League of Legends play for the rest of the year.

Riot Games has taken a rather strong stance against "toxic behavior" for its super popular MOBA - League of Legends, and it seems even professional players aren't immune to the Riot banhammer. The company has announced that two LoL pros - Alfonso "Mithy" Rodriguez and Erlend "Nukeduck" Holm - have been banned from professional play for the rest of the year, following more than a few outbursts of not-so-sportsmanlike behavior.

The official report of the bans on the game's forums [http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1749326] state that both players have "exhibited extremely toxic behavior in solo queue" - that is, the "single player" queuing option for the game. In Rodriguez's case, "his harassment score rose to be within the top 1% of all players on EUW," while Holm "has been reported in nearly 30% of the games he played, with over 65% of those reports being for Offensive Language, Negative Attitude, and Verbal Abuse."

Despite previous punishments for their toxicity, both player's behavior showed no improvement over the past months, even after their accounts became Chat Restricted.

The official punishment for the two pros is that they will be suspended from the League Championship Series and the Challenger Series through the end of 2014 (it's unknown whether or not they will be able to continue playing the game on their own, private League of Legends accounts).

So there you have it. Being a pro doesn't excuse you from being a dick, and it's nice to see Riot not make exceptions for professional players.

Source: Riot Games [http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1749326]

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[JET1971]

Good. That's all I can say and I do not even play MOBA'S. I dislike elitism in any game and despise L2P elitist comments.

 

[Zhukov]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

 

[Albino Boo]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

Its a pretty even contest between LoL and Eve. That said at least riot is doing something.

 

[Mahorfeus]

Good to see.

This e-sports thing might need more time to truly take off, but continuing to keep their pros in check is a good sign.

 

[J Tyran]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

Its a pretty even contest between LoL and Eve. That said at least riot is doing something.

Rubbish, EVE has a great community. Normal gameplay is not "nasty" behaviour, in all the time I played EVE I had more abuse and death threats from the players that think they should be able to play their own little game within EVE and be left alone (The ones labelled by some as "carebears").

 

[The Wykydtron]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

I dunno, DOTA 2 is up there as well. I still get nightmares of Russians shouting down voice chat with crazy loud WUB WUB Dubstep on in the background. At least Riot has a functional report and punishment system. Let's not forget the entirety of Xbox Live, how many mothers have sexually frustated 15 year olds allegedly banged by now? Aside from ArcSys games which are perfectly civil for some unknown reason.

OT: Good. The pros should know better. Especially when they can rage out loud verbally in stream not actually in game, i'm fairly certain you're alright on the ban front there.

 

[RaikuFA]

Good. That's all I can say and I do not even play MOBA'S. I dislike elitism in any game and despise L2P elitist comments.

Same here. Yet there's a bunch of people who play MOBA's and fighters who'd disagree.

 

[AdamG3691]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

at least in EVE being a dick is a mechanic

 

[Queen Michael]

Nice to see some good news aboutt his kind of thing. Cheers me up.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

"Professional" is more than a title; it's an attitude. Riot Games can only benefit from keeping these pseudo-"pros" from chasing off potential paying customers.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Guess they're finally getting tired of their game being known for Nastiest Playerbase on Earth.

Its a pretty even contest between LoL and Eve. That said at least riot is doing something.

Rubbish, EVE has a great community. Normal gameplay is not "nasty" behaviour, in all the time I played EVE I had more abuse and death threats from the players that think they should be able to play their own little game within EVE and be left alone (The ones labelled by some as "carebears").

Eh. It's not rubbish to say that there are some real nasty fuckers in EVE.

Generally the community is great but you also get people like Erotica 1 and the Goon spy master who doxxed people and if you read the forums you see a lot of people being dicks.

It's also a community that thinks 'jew' is an appropriate way to refer to players making money on the market. Let's not kid ourselves.

Note: I'm not talking about ganks and other mechanics based dickery. That's fine. That's needed.

 

[Barbas]

"Professional" is more than a title; it's an attitude. Riot Games can only benefit from keeping these pseudo-"pros" from chasing off potential paying customers.

Damn right.

OT: Good. They were given their chance and nobody enjoys a toxic community.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I don't get why there needs to be a whole reporting and censorship regime if there are functional ignore lists. I haven't played LoL, do they have ignore lists? If not that seems like a major oversight.

 

[Artemicion]

I was half expecting this to be about Xpecial.


Again.

Oh well, it was bound to happen, given the size of the community.

 

[Comrademig]

I don't get why there needs to be a whole reporting and censorship regime if there are functional ignore lists. I haven't played LoL, do they have ignore lists? If not that seems like a major oversight.

They do have an ignore list and a mute function in game. That still doesn't mean we can't report and punish them for being a jerk in-game. Riot is invested in this because the less jerks there are, the more people will stick around.

 

[psychopez]

I don't get why there needs to be a whole reporting and censorship regime if there are functional ignore lists. I haven't played LoL, do they have ignore lists? If not that seems like a major oversight.

LoL does have an ignore feature, it's as easy as hitting tab to bring up a status screen of all the players and pressing a small button next to a player's name, and all of their chat will be blocked.

But most time the toxic players are on the same side. Toxic behavior more often comes from disagreements with your teammates, not the opponent.

So you ignore someone, but you're 15-20 minutes into a 45 minute game. You still have to work with this person. So you've blocked them, but the damage is already done. You're less willing to work as a full team now. The other players are feeling a bit discouraged, which means that the chances one of you makes a bad play increases slightly, and when it happens the morale on your team drops a bit more. It then spirals from there.

Now, the game is over, and if anyone goes back into queue to play again, they're taking a bit of the baggage from that game. Chances are slightly higher now that each of those 5 people bring a bit of the toxic behavior into their next game, and the process repeats itself.

So the issue isn't of the immediate toxic user, it's the virus effect it has on the larger community as a whole.

Riot did a bit of analysis and presented it to GDC here that talks about it-- http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-Behind-Shaping-Player

 

[loa]

I've never heard the term "toxic" being thrown about that oftenly until riot manipulated you all into using it constantly.

 

[psychopez]

I've never heard the term "toxic" being thrown about that oftenly until riot manipulated you all into using it constantly.

Naming something is key in helping to control something.

 

[Lizmichi]

Good, I've played some games of LoL with some nasty people. I'm happy with Riot sticks to their guns. The game is all about team work, and most of the bullshit comes from another team member. A pissy player can screw your team over in more ways then one even without saying a word.