Riot Games is locked in an eternal struggle against what it calls “toxicity”. As League of Legends gets bigger, so too does the number of assholes playing the game. And while the company’s previous attempts to combat this have been interesting, this latest step is much more direct.
As Motherboard reports, this new system is used for players who have been reported for having inappropriate summoner names. Previously, anyone with a name like “Rap3lorD” or “sH1tf1ngrs” would have been given a generated replacement name by Riot until they chose a more appropriate handle.
That option is still available for players who want to either a) play with a name assigned by Riot, or b) pay for a name change. But this week, users have begun noticing a another, new system being tested, which is a lot more involved.
It’s a survey (this is just a part of it), which asks the reported player a series of questions that they need to respond to. As Motherboard point out, the questions aren’t original: they’re taken from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely-used test that determines a person’s degree of narcissism.
Reported players must answer one of these surveys, play 50 games, then take another survey. Once that’s all done, they can then pick out a new name.
Riot’s previous moves to help combat jerk behavior have been both punitive and remote. This, while a little off-putting to some, also seems far more pro-active, not to mention potentially beneficial to Riot in the long-run, since they can collect all this data and use it to get a better understanding of what’s going on with people who feel the need to make offensive usernames.
UPDATE (10/16/15 5:00 pm): An earlier version of this article made it sound like Riot is requiring all League of Legends players with offensive names to go through the extended survey process. Riot has since clarified in a statement given to Gamasutra that this is not the case. Players still have the option to opt out of the survey and either pay for a new name (which is still subject to the same rules as their old one, obviously), or simply play with the name Riot’s given to them. Riot’s full statement:
When a player has an offensive name and it’s reported by the community, then we change it for them. It’s a standard process for games and online platforms. Players can opt out of the free name change survey and play with their assigned names or they can pay for a name change. The survey helps players think about their behavior and this benefits the entire community.