Riot Games is on the warpath recently for its MOBA League of Legends, announcing new measures to outright ban toxic players this week. Lead social systems designer Jeffrey Lin has now revealed on the game’s forum that the developer is restricting players who use their chat to rudely communicate with their teams.
“We find that many players never chat at all and only use smart pings and perform pretty well. For a large number of players, chat restrictions actually increases their win rates, because being verbally abusive to teammates tends to make the team’s performance spiral negatively.
“We have considered restricting players from playing Ranked if they currently have a penalty, [and we] should have more information about this in the future.”
Along with banning toxic players, it seems this initiative will become more permanent in the coming days but the lesson here is to be careful how you treat your team-mates, lest you get rightfully smacked down for being a jerk.