Riot Games has a big response for Voyboy's LoL NA solo queue rant

Olivia Richman Published 07/05/2020

Riot Games has finally responded to the League of Legends community’s ongoing complaints about “malicious players” ruining ranked and solo queue games.

For a long time, the League community has felt that Riot failed to respond to claims that their MOBA’s playerbase has become increasingly toxic, to the point where gameplay has been significantly affected. Former League of Legends pro Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani decided to take it upon himself to become a spokesperson for the community on the issue.

And now, after Voyboy’s concerns went viral, it seems to have worked.

Voyboy ranted about Riot’s ongoing disregard over toxic players, noting that this large group of players who aren’t just aggressive and rude, but fail to cooperate with their team, practice stream sniping, and purposely feed during competitive matches when things aren’t going their way. Basically, they are getting in the way of their teammates’ success. Voyboy and others say that this has become an even more noticeable problem in Season 9 and Season 10.

“The state of the community and the player base has gotten progressively worse over time. I know this for a fact. You can ask almost anyone and you will get a resounding agreement that the playerbase has gotten more toxic, there’s a lot more griefers, a lot more people inting games, going AFK because someone annoyed them, or just for no reason,” Voyboy said. “This is getting worse and worse and worse every year.”

According to Voyboy, this toxic behavior is being experienced on a large scale from the upper tiers of Challenger down to normal draft games. The video was met with support from the League of Legends community, who collectively agreed that they don’t feel as good when they get on League of Legends to play because of the problems Voyboy mentioned.

But even worse than the toxic players is Riot’s lack of response. In 2018, Voyboy said that he went to Riot Games headquarters to discuss this problem, warning them that they needed to take action. But in 2019, it just got worse. He even admitted to feeling “miserable” the past 10 months of playing League of Legends due to toxic players.

“There’s no point of even reporting people. No one is scared of getting in trouble. No one is scared of being banned. Riot has really made it clear through their actions: They don’t really care,” Voyboy said.

League of Legends community reacts to Voyboy’s plea to Riot

For a while, Riot Games remained silent in spite of the renewed outrage. Meanwhile, many notable personablities in the League of Legends community responded to Voyboy’s video with their own experiences. This included Counter Logic Gaming founder George “Hotshot” Georgallidis, who said he has “pushed for changes” at Riot for over eight years.

“Riot hasn’t made any effort because they don’t want to or they’re not capable… Competitive spirit is dying more and more every day and it feels [like a] monotonous grind is being promoted,” Hotshot said.

Being a positive streamer has grown more and more tiring when we’re bombarded by toxicity which has felt like the norm for the past few seasons. Big ups Voy
— Danny Le (@Shiphtur) May 5, 2020

TSM’s Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng also weighed in with his own response video. He said he agreed with everything Voyboy said, noting that there’s no way to report someone for griefing or intentionally ruining games.

“In the last eight to nine years of streaming, I haven’t reported many people. But in the last few weeks, I’ve had people spamming personal insults and racist shit. Just really fucking crazy stuff going on. I can’t remember the last time I reported someone, but in the last few months I’ve had to report five people. But there’s no punishment. These people are still playing,” Doublelift said.

Riot Games responds to Voyboy about toxic playerbase

After a few days, Riot Games finally responded to Voyboy’s video. League of Legends commentator Rivington Bisland addressed Voyboy’s concerns in the latest Riot Report, which aired on May 5.

“We can assure you that here at Riot, this is something that is taken very seriously. We are always watching. We are always iterating on that process. The team is working around the clock to make sure this is something that can be resolved in a timely manner,” Riv stated.

He thanked Voyboy for speaking out on the matter, letting him know that his voice was being heard.

“Rest assured, we’re on the case. And hopefully it’s something that brings a better quality of life to players,” Riv added.

The League of Legends commentator didn’t dive into any detail regarding what measures Riot is taking to deal with toxic players. It’s unclear how the developer is planning to address this ongoing problem, or when this any change might be implemented.

Olivia Richman

About Olivia Richman

Olivia has worked in media ever since graduating from college, with her coverage ranging from traditional newspaper reporting to digital coverage of all things gaming, online betting, and nerd culture. She has traveled around the world pursuing that coverage, from the far coasts of the United States to the busy downtown core of Tokyo, Japan. Olivia’s favorite games include Overwatch and Super Smash Smash Bros, and she has been published at Esports Illustrated, Inven Global, EsportsInsider, Upcomer, and elsewhere.

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