Riot Games is rolling out a new griefing detection system for League of Legends designed to identify and punish players who intentionally sabotage matches. This long-awaited feature distinguishes between genuine poor performance and deliberate game-ruining behaviour, addressing one of the community’s most persistent complaints.
Phreak, the well-known Riot developer and caster, has expressed strong confidence in the system and is “absolutely thrilled” about its potential effectiveness. The system has already undergone live testing in previous patches, but the actual punishment component will be activated with the upcoming update.
The new detection technology incorporates behavioral pattern recognition and potentially leverages AI to identify various forms of griefing. It’s built to catch obvious cases like running down mid lane repeatedly to feed kills to enemies and more subtle “soft inting” behaviors such as refusing to group with the team or intentionally missing abilities.
Riot plans a careful initial rollout focusing first on clear-cut cases of griefing. This approach aims to keep mistakes to a minimum, so players who have legitimately bad games don’t get punished by accident. As confidence in the system grows, Riot will gradually expand and fine-tune its parameters.
Griefing has been a persistent problem in League since its inception. Unlike chat toxicity, which is relatively easy to detect through text analysis, identifying intentional gameplay sabotage has proven much more challenging. Players who deliberately throw games but do so subtly have historically faced few consequences, leading to widespread frustration.
Previous attempts to deal with disruptive behavior included the now-defunct Tribunal system, which let community members review reported cases, and various versions of automated detection systems. However, none have tackled the tricky side of griefing, especially “soft inting” that can look like a rough match.
