We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Just 2% of League of Legends games witness abuse claims Riot

League of Legends

League of Legends has a patchy reputation for player toxicity, but it’s not as bad as you may think. Riot has revealed that just 2% of every League of Legends match played contains some kind of abuse. Such a small figure has been achieved thanks to a Tribunal system that polices player behaviour. 

The Tribunal system has players vote on instances of reported abuse, and the results of these votes is used to help improve the automated system that detects poor behaviour. Thanks to the constant learning of the system, the Tribunal has had a drastic impact on League of Legends’ player culture.

“As a result of these governance systems changing online cultural norms, incidences of homophobia, sexism and racism in League of Legends have fallen to a combined 2% of all games,” wrote Riot’s lead game designer of social systems Jeffrey “Lyte” Lin in a blog post at Recode.

“Verbal abuse has dropped by more than 40%, and 91.6% of negative players change their act and never commit another offense after just one reported penalty. These results have inspired us, because we realize that this isn’t an impossible problem after all.”

Interestingly, Riot’s Tribunal system has revealed that most abuse does not come from players with a history of negative behaviour.

“Our team found that if you classified online citizens from negative to positive, the vast majority of negative behavior (which ranges from trash talk to non-extreme but still generally offensive language) did not originate from the persistently negative online citizens,” revealed Lin.

“In fact, 87% of online toxicity came from the neutral and positive citizens just having a bad day here or there.”

How do you feel about League of Legends’ player behaviour? If you’re a long term player, have you noticed toxicity decline during the years the Tribunal system has been around? And if you’re new, has abuse put you off playing?

Thanks, VG247.