Riot Games’ Tribunal System Reduces Abuse on Its Platform
Riot Games’ Tribunal System Reduces Abuse on Its Platform
Riot Games, producer of the PC-based multiplayer League of Legends (LoL), has been selected as Inc. magazine’s Company of the Year. One of the reasons they are the most popular PC game in North America and Europe is due to their success at handling abuse, through its Tribunal system of rule enforcement, which not only penalizes toxic players but rewards those who have a pattern of positive behavior.
The Riot Games Tribunal is made up of players with exemplary conduct who review and vote on reported abuse of the “Summoner’s Code” of Conduct. If the conduct warrants it, a case is opened. Tribunal members then vote on the appropriate action against the user, either to “Punish” them, to “Pardon” them, or to “Skip” the case. When twenty votes are received, the case is closed and the member receives a detailed report on the decision. Punishment ranges from a warning, to a one-day ban, to permanent expulsion.
The most positive aspects of the Tribunal system are that a player is notified within hours of its decision, and in the report, they are told what infraction triggered the opening of a case. As reported by Christine Porath in her book “Mastering Civility,” after 100 million votes, verbal abuse is 40% lower and 91.6% of reported members never receive another violation report.
The takeaway for community managers and moderators is to empower your community members: allow members to report the abuse they witness, allow an empowered team of members (The Tribunal) to quickly vote on the violation report and let the member know the outcome, and let the member what, if anything, they did wrong.
Of course, this system only works on platforms with an extremely large member database. Smaller ones still need a team of experienced moderators to vet abuse reports and take action against toxic community members.
