UPDATED 16:10 EDT / APRIL 02 2015

Riot Games starts giving banned League of Legends players a second chance

League of Legends wallpaperRiot Games’ League of Legends has been trying to shake its reputation for a toxic player base for some time now, and part of its new strategy has been to focus on reform rather than punishment. In its latest move, the Santa Monica-based developer has decided to rescind its ban for Nicolaj “Incarnati0n” Jensen, a professional LoL player who had been banned for “a consistent pattern of in-game verbal abuse, offensive behavior and negative attitude.”

After a thorough review process, Riot wrote that Jensen appeared to be reformed. “Since his last review, Jensen has continued to demonstrate behavior in game that is well above the normal standards of good behavior across all of his accounts since at least January 2014,” Riot wrote. “Additionally, according to our monitoring tools, he has not been implicated in any DDOS or Drophacking-related exploits since Q2 2013. There have been no serious offenses or violations of the letter or spirit of the Summoner Code since his account-sharing related offense in Q1 2014.”

Riot notes that Jensen is “the first formerly permabanned player ever to be admitted back into professional play” and therefore was subjected to a high standard of behavior, and the developer has been satisfied with the changes it has seen in him. “All the data supports the conclusion that Jensen has legitimately reformed and has earned a second chance,” Riot wrote.

 

"Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means"

“Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don’t have any idea what that means”

 

Other players did not fare as well. Four other players were mentioned in Riot’s suspension reviews, but none of them were unbanned. While a few had made some progress toward reforming, none appeared to have met the same standards Jensen had. One player in particular, Khaled “Darkwinjax” Abusagr, has made no progress toward improvement at all.

“His most active account has been reported in 47% of his games in the last 90 days and 50% in the last 60,” Riot wrote. “He’s received a total of 1830 reports in 590 games. 70% of which were for offensive language, verbal abuse or negative attitude.” Yikes.

At GDC 2015, Riot’s Jeffrey Lin talked about LoL’s recently added auto-moderation system, which monitors player interactions and issues short duration bans with full explanations and text evidence. Lin noted that the new system resulted in a much higher chance of reform, as well as an overall drop in player toxicity.

Image credit: Riot Games (c)

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