'League of Legends' Developer Riot Games To Police "Off-Platform Conduct And Behavior Connected To Our IP"
Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, announced that it will attempt to police “‘off-platform conduct’ and behavior connected to our IP.”
In a November 26th blog post titled “Creator-related Updates to our Privacy Notice and Terms of Service,” Riot Games stated, “‘Off-Platform conduct’ and behavior connected to our IP is now subject to our Terms of Service.”
The company explained, “Our intention with this update is to help protect players from harmful behaviors they can experience across the various places that touch their gaming experience. This update applies very specifically and only to content where Riot’s games are the background of the content produced.”
“Though we aren’t going to proactively monitor everything that happens across social media, it is now within our rights to issue penalties in-game when that content is brought to our attention,” it asserted. “As an example, if a creator uses hateful slurs about an opposing player or teammate on their stream, but not in game over chat or voice comms, we can still issue a penalty as if that behavior occurred in-game.”
It summarized, “TL;DR - If you say or do things that break our Terms of Service while broadcasting or creating content about our games, we can restrict access to your Riot accounts (and suspend your Partner privileges if you are part of our Partner Program).”
Later in the update, Riot also declared, “We’re starting to restrict access to all of a player’s Riot accounts for particularly serious violations of our Terms of Service.”
It explained, “We want our games to be fun and welcoming to everyone, but sometimes bad actors do particularly bad things. When that happens, we want to make sure they don’t just take that bad attitude into another Riot game and create negative experiences elsewhere. So, for the rare occasion a seriously egregious violation occurs, we’re now including Riot-wide bans in our penalty system.”
Finally, the company noted, “We know that some of these updates may require creators to rethink their existing content strategy and content partners. We are giving creators until Jan 3rd, 2025 to adjust their content to adhere to these rules. Past that date, we can and may begin enforcing these across the entire creator community.”
These changes are not at all surprising given in May of this year Riot Games’ Valorant Studio Head Anna Donlon informed players “to play something else. We won’t miss you,” while discussing new policies policing player actions.
She specifically stated, “Competitive games need to have room for banter. We believe this. And I do understand the fear. The fear that we will sanitize gaming by over addressing these issues. We have no interest in doing that. That’s not what we’re talking about here. But we do believe that a person should not be in a position to have to grow a thicker skin, or whatever other unhelpful suggestions have been thrown out there just to avoid threats of violence or literal hate speech.”
“There’s no room in our community for the most egregious behaviors, and we’re not going to compromise on that point. If you need to make truly evil statements under the guise of regular s**t talk to enjoy gaming, then please play something else. We won’t miss you,” she instructed.
Donlon continued, “Val Community, We can’t stop them from opening their mouths and saying something awful. I wish we could, but we can’t stop that part. What we can do is help escort them out of our game spaces. We do some of this already. The vast majority of the time when someone says something out of line and gets reprimanded, they learn as a result of our feedback systems, they keep playing. They rarely repeat offend.”
“The number of players who exhibit these behaviors are not the majority, I assure you,” she declared. “In fact, they are a very small fraction of our player base. However, it has definitely become clear to us that our existing penalties are not doing enough right now to remove the most disruptive players from Valorant in an efficient manner.”
Later in the video, she made it clear it was all about attempting to control people’s behaviors, “Look, I know this message is intense. So let me say this: This is not just about preventing the worst. The goal is to make it so that the people who want to play Val are able to love playing Val. It’s about promoting the best in each of us. It’s about ensuring that people can share in the joy of the matches won and the tough losses, and the amazing feeling of community that gaming can create. I want to thank you for the time. We’re on this journey together, and despite the challenges, I know that the future of your building is bright and worth every effort. Thank you everyone.”
Based on this new policy, it is clear that Riot wants to extend their control of player behavior outside of their own influence.
What do you make of Riot policing off-platform conduct moving forward?