League of Legends introduces new punishment system in China to curb players' bad behavior

I wrote earlier this week that my experience with League of Legends so far has been surprisingly free of abuse from the negative community that the game is so famous for. But that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t have a problem with player attitudes, and in China, Riot is rolling out a new system that’s designed to keep asshole players from ruining the fun for everyone else.

The old system — account bans — remains in place but soon, Chinese players may also find themselves “silenced”. Silenced players will be incapable of any kind of game-wide communication, and communication with teammates will be limited. This punishment will persist for a set number of games, and then be removed if the players are friendly towards their teammates during this time. If they continue to be negative, the “silenced” punishment can continue indefinitely or eventually lead to an account ban.

The error message silenced players will see: ‘Chat has been limited, you have 35 matches left’

From the language of the announcement, it isn’t entirely clear, but it sounds like this system will be automated, which likely means that some innocent players will get caught up in the crossfire. But given that the new “silencing” system allows players to continue playing and to communicate to some extent with their teammates during games, this shouldn’t be a huge issue.

It’s interesting to see Riot and Tencent (LoL‘s China publisher) trying out a system that’s quite different from the “tribunal system” Riot employs in other markets to keep League players civil. Will this new system for China be more effective? We’ll have to wait and see; the statement sent to Chinese gamers says it will be implemented “soon”.

(via Netease Games)