How Riot Games hopes to reform banned League of Legends players

The creators of League of Legends are trialling a new system designed to help banned players reform their behaviour.

Built around instant feedback, the premise is that players will receive a reform card soon after their ban, which links to evidence of their negative behaviour so they can understand why they have been punished – the theory being that the quicker you tell a player why this is happening to them, the more likely they are to behave better in the future.

The current version of the system targets “verbal harassment [around] homophobia, racism, sexism, death threats and other forms of excessive abuse”, according to Riot Games. The punishment for this behaviour is a two-week or permanent ban within 15 minutes of the end of the match.

Gamers can send reports on the offending player, which the system will then validate to make sure they aren’t false. It then determines whether the player needs to be banned and emails them a reform card, which will include the chat log featuring their verbal harassment.

“The player behaviour team will be on deck, hand-reviewing the first few thousand cases the instant feedback system sorts through,” the firm says. “If the test goes smoothly, we expect instant feedback to roll out to all regions shortly.

“[Future] upgrades will allow it to shoulder more reform and punishment responsibilities, and even reward positive play.”