How League of Legends cleaned up its act

Could all of the toxic community behavior found in League of Legends actually be beneficial? It might be in a roundabout fashion, as Riot Games has performed countless hours of research on the issue in an attempt to discourage vile gamers and encourage positive sportsmanship.

In a new interview at Re/code, Riot’s social systems team revealed what it’s been working on to make people play nice. The issue wasn’t solely with a handful of bad seeds; Riot said that 87% of negative behavior came from generally nice people having bad days or moments. “The answer had to be community-wide reform of cultural norms,” the studio concluded.

To deal with the toxicity, Riot put out a tribunal program that allowed players to be judged by their peers. Data from the program were then automated with the help of behavioral scientists. The result? Verbal abuse is down 40%, incidences are down to 2% of all games, and a vast majority of first-time offenders caught have yet to relapse.