Riot collected $31,850 in fines against misbehaving League of Legends players and teams participating in its 2014 League of Legends Championship Series — and is donating all of the money to The Trevor Project, the company announced in a new blog post.
It’s an interesting choice: Money mostly collected due to toxic behavior is being transferred to a charity that handles crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.
Riot’s rationale is worth reading — as it’s both interesting and contains unexpected data about League of Legends player behavior:
“Suicide prevention and homophobia is something that the LoL community feels strongly about too. When we looked at in-game reports, we found that games that included the word ‘faggot’ in their chat log received 165.84% more reports than games that included the word ‘fuck’. Likewise, you were swift to punish players who encouraged others towards suicide in the heat of the moment – games that included ‘kill yourself’ in their chat logs received 225.65% more reports than games that included the word ‘fuck’. As a community, you find these words hurtful and unacceptable and so do we. We know that harassment and its consequences goes beyond just words in a game – and that’s why the work of organizations like The Trevor Project is so important. We hope that this money will be able to boost their work creating a safe and inclusive environment for all of us, regardless of sexual orientation.”
That fits with the greater narrative of how the company tackles community management; Jeffrey Lin, the company’s lead designer of social systems, told Gamasutra about the importance of that approach in March:
“One of our guiding principles … is we don’t want to be the drivers. We don’t want to be the arbitrators. We want the community itself to drive their own community.”
Riot recently instituted an automated “player reform” system; at the time of its first test, Lin wrote: “Your reports help the instant feedback system understand and punish the kind of verbal harassment the community actively rejects: homophobia, racism, sexism, death threats, and other forms of excessive abuse.”
The company has further plans for its support of charities and non-profits, which will be detailed at a later time.