Riot's quixotic attempt to police bad "Off-Platform" conduct is met with failure when it bans offenders from their games and suspends partner privileges.

Riot Games released some information earlier this month about the update to its terms of service. The majority of the changes are not very interesting, with the exception of one that is mainly aimed at the content creators community.

Riot Games posted that "These updates ensure that we're evolving along with games and the ecosystem of content to make the best experience possible for our creators and players." Riot Games can punish players for using hateful language and harmful rhetorics, even if it's not in voice or text-based chat. You just need to play a Riot-developed game to be held responsible. This is known as Off-Platform Conduct.

This update was designed to protect players against harmful behavior that can be experienced in the different places where their gaming experience is impacted. This update only applies to content that uses Riot's games as the background.

This could theoretically mean that you can bypass the Off-Platform Conduct rule by quickly switching to another game whenever you want to talk shite about someone. But I could be wrong (and probably am), as there isn't much detail on what constitutes punishment for such a major change.

Riot says that, "While we won't be proactively monitoring everything that happens on social media, we can now issue penalties in-game if that content is brought our attention." "For example, if someone uses hateful slurs against an opposing teammate or player on their stream, but not over voice or chat, we can still impose a penalty just as if it happened in-game.

If you broadcast or create content about our games and break our Terms of Services, we may restrict access to your Riot account (and suspend your Partner priviledges if you're a part of our Partner Program).

Players will be penalized for violating the terms of service. For example, if they promote content about buying/selling accounts. The blog post states that "We take competitive ethics seriously and see these behaviors as detrimental to creating fun, fair play." If a creator is sponsored or promotes boosting websites, encourages players to buy or sell accounts, does anything else that encourages them to break our rules we may suspend your Riot account.

Stream sniping has also gained more attention. Riot's community has apparently made this one of the most discussed issues. It is also a threat to competitive integrity, just like buying/selling accounts. Riot is developing a policy to combat this issue, and is testing a system of penalties.

Both penalties for stream sniping, and buying/selling of accounts sound like great changes that will work to create an even playing field in Riot games. However, I see some problems with policing Off Platform conduct. It seems that the line between what's allowed and what's not is a little fuzzy right now. Riot will have a tough time policing the players if they only penalise them for being rude.

I have wished bad things on other players and sometimes even on my team in the heat battle. I was chat banned in Overwatch 2 for a few minutes after threatening harm to a hamster, because a Wrecking ball player wouldn't leave. I'd love to meet someone who doesn't go overboard when playing competitive FPS multiplayers. Just last night, one of my teammates harrassed me in text chat for failing a relatively simple one-on-one battle. I saw the messages but couldn't care less. I don't care if players say nasty things about me.

The severity of the punishments may be unclear at this time, but the worst is reserved for the most egregious violations. Riot will restrict access to all accounts for those who spread hateful rhetoric consistently in their games. If that's how you do business, you have until the 3rd of January 2025 to change. Otherwise, Valorant and League of Legends will not be available for you.