Does Riot Games Care About LoL Cheaters and Griefers?

League of Legends isn’t known for being the healthiest game out there. While cheating isn’t as rampant, there are people who intentionally make the experience worse for other people and brush it off as part of the game’s “culture” that people have been accustomed to after years of playing. For the more reasonable demographic, they are tired of playing the game with LoL cheaters and griefers who ruin the fun. What is Riot Games doing to tackle this issue?

Riot Vanguard VS LoL Cheaters

Riot Vanguard is considered one of the best anti-cheat engines in the gaming market because it does its job well in filtering out LoL cheaters and illegal software before they even begin the game. It also doesn’t interfere with other software that might be wrongfully detected as cheat engines. That being said, Riot Vanguard doesn’t 100% filter out the cheaters in the game so there are still players who get through using things like scripts and other types of cheats in both League of Legends and VALORANT.

The good thing about League of Legends is that cheaters in the game always get detected sooner or later because it’s easy to notice if a player is using a script or not. Of course, Riot Games still needs to review reports so they’ll still be responsible for people who get banned from the game. Riot Games has done a good job at keeping the LoL cheaters out of the game so generally, there is no serious problem about this sector of the game that the company isn’t actively doing a good job about.

Toxic Behavior in League of Legends

League of Legends has always been one of the most toxic games out there. Some toxic regions are worse than others because the culture of gaming in those places has devolved so much that it is more unusual for a player to display polite gaming behavior. It may be fun to meme about League of Legends is “naturally” toxic but people need to understand that the “culture” these communities have built is only serving as a negative experience for most people who start playing the game.

Unlike its cheat engine, Riot Games doesn’t do a good job of eliminating or punishing players who make the experience bad for other players. Griefing, hate speech, AFK/leaving the game issues, and other ways that players can make the game worse for other players aren’t easily punished by the company, especially when it’s happening in hundreds of games per day around the world. This should not be an excuse but it’s not wrong to say that a team of humans will have difficulties reviewing all cases accurately.

Tyler1 is a good example of this issue but you’d be surprised that he’s actually on the receiving end of the harassment. Tyler1 recently set his goal to conquer the European League of Legends region by trying to reach challenger. However, a small portion of the European community tried to stand in his way by trying to get into his games and intentionally playing badly to prevent him from reaching challenger rank.

Streamers and influencers are usually the most common victims of harassment and toxic behavior in League of Legends but tens of thousands of regular people around the world also get harassed for simply playing the game. Riot Games has been accused of giving special treatment to streamers and influences in terms of their reports but the truth is that the report system is bad for all players, including for Riot Games employees themselves.

Does Riot Games Care About These Issues?

Riot Games obviously cares about the negative experiences that players encounter. However, they are a company above all whose priority is to make a profit from its video game titles. The act of mass banning players for every offense isn’t a profitable move because it would give them the image of a company that abuses its power to get rid of people they didn’t like.

The problem with having an automated system that is able to consistently ban players from making offenses in the game is that it can backfire quickly on the image of the company. If the system ever bans someone innocent, it’ll blow up at Riot Games’ face and be sensationalized as an issue regarding the company’s policies. Even though it’s unfair that Riot Games would prioritize its own image and pockets, it’s simply how things work in the world today.

How Riot Games Can Tackle These Issues

Riot Games should definitely make sure that major offenses are regularly reviewed and taken action upon. Things like people making racist remarks or threatening another player’s well-being are often the major issues that Riot Games takes seriously but there are a lot of major offenses that are overlooked. This is mostly because the players themselves like to exaggerate their own experience in game hoping that Riot Games will give a heavy punishment to players they dislike.

Here are some ways to prevent LoL cheaters and people who display toxic behavior can be punished:

• Have a system that filters the severity of an offense
• Have a system that reviews matches to detect anomalies in gameplay so that humans don’t have to manually review everything.
• Players who make false reports should receive punishment to make sure that complaints are accurate in terms of severity.
• Offenders should have their accounts monitored for a couple of months after their punishment has been lifted.

Looking at these possible solutions raises another problem: budget. Riot Games is in no way or form struggling financially. That being said, companies aren’t willing to shell out more budget on stuff they don’t believe is necessary to the game. The departments that handle these issues are given a fixed budget so they don’t have the freedom to work on new projects or hire more staff to help them out. It feels like a lose-lose situation but we can only hope that we can succeed in the future.