The online community that I chose to observe is the League of Legend Community through the platforms of Reddit, YouTube, and an interview with a player of the game. My observations led me to a community whose toxic behaviors ruin the game for others trying to have an enjoyable experience.

Tackling Toxicity in the League of Legends Community

Imagine being in a locked room for thirty minutes with four strangers that constantly blame you for their mistakes, insult you, and overly criticize you. Well, that’s what it is like to play a game called League of Legends. League of Legends (LoL) is a highly complex, team-based PC strategy video game developed by Riot Games that has been around for more than ten years now. The LoL community uses every social media platform available to interact with each other. Even though these message boards or posts on forums are places where the community comes together, these online media pages seem to lack the toxicity that the League of Legends community is infamous for. Thus, the player perspective, in-game chat interactions, in-game actions, and posts addressing the toxic environment unveil what it is really like to play League of Legends.  

 Before addressing why players exhibit toxic behavior, it is imperative to understand how the people in the community perceive what toxicity is. Toxicity is a very vague and general term to describe negative behavior on Summoner’s Rift[1]. On the League of Legends subreddit, there was a post claiming that the game should allow players to express toxicity. Even though his stance is rather interesting, the comments under the post were more informative on the community’s understanding of toxicity and if it should or should not be in the game. According to the various interactions in the comments, it seems as if the community is split in its perception of what is toxic behavior. For example, one person stated that the behavior described in the post above was considered as “…just trashtalking” (u/Ildigrub, 2019) while another comment stated, “My teammates constantly shittalk me on my first game… [they] didn’t want me to get better… if this was more common, I’d probably just stop playing the game” (u/Hellioning, 2019). Therefore, it seems that the community’s sensitivity in identifying toxic behavior is very subjective to one’s experiences and emotions. Clearly, there are some people who believe that banter, criticisms, and small insults are normal, and others believe that it is toxic. However, there was a general consensus of what is objectively unacceptable behavior that has no place in the community and in the game. This includes the use of racial slurs, “inting”[2], or constant direct attacks on a player for no apparent reason. On this post in the subreddit, there were moments where they used their own vocabulary, but there was no unique or particular way they used their own language. They just used their words as if they were normal everyday words.

Another element that was agreed upon by the people who replied to the post was the need for people to start taking accountability for their mistakes. According to many people on the subreddit, blame seemed to be a huge cause for players exhibiting toxic behavior. For example, the most upvoted comment describes a hypothetical scenario where toxic behavior is a snowball effect. He describes the scenario as one person blaming another for being in a losing position, then another person highlights the mistakes of the player that was originally blaming, and so on and so forth, until the whole team is divided, and they lose focus on winning the game. In my own personal view, I find this type of behavior being rather shocking as a member of the gaming community. I’ve experienced some toxic moments in other games but, while I was playing LoL to make observations, I found it borderline disturbing for people to act in such a way unapologetically. Since the game is so nuanced and complicated, there are infinite scenarios and contexts that can lead to toxic behaviors as responses to what happens in game. Thus, it is impossible to encapsulate all types of toxic responses in two or three sequences of events in a game. It is most likely more fruitful to understand why people react in such a manner.  

Out of the millions of people around the world who play LoL, streamers are the best people to determine what is toxicity and why people normalize it. This is because streamers play the game for a livelihood and play at an extremely high level. Thus, streamers are more affected by other players “griefing”[3] and people who “throw”[4] prevent them from achieving their goals. Also, some larger streamers are targeted by people who “int”, so some popular streamers experience toxicity through in-game actions more than the average player. 

In a YouTube video on a channel known as HealthyGamerGG, a psychiatrist named Alok Konjia, interviews a group of positive streamers that reject the toxic nature of the League of Legends community; during the interview, the streamers present some interesting points regarding why players interact in a toxic manner. One of the contributing factors to enabling members of the community to exhibit this type of behavior is that the gatekeepers (Riot Games’ behavioral team) uphold a conduct system that is fundamentally flawed. There are plenty of instances where players that gravely violate the rules go without consequences and relatively minor offenses are punished more frequently. In addition to virtually having no consequences, players that are toxic often act based on a violation of an expectation they hold when going into a game. For example, if a player really wants to contest an objective and then dies because their teammates recognized it was a losing situation if they were to go and help, then the player feels robbed of an expectation because things didn’t go the way they expected. After that, the player gives out what was dealt to them and may “int” (footnote two) to rob the team’s expectation to play the game normally and possibly win. It seems as if there is a shared belief among the toxic majority that selfishness governs an uncompromising attitude. In an interview that I conducted with an average player, he states that the concept of expectation robbing/revenge reigns true in his experience. In additon, he recalls that his worst experience was being called numerous “racial slurs and then being told to kill himself” though the chat due to a mistake he made. In addition, he describes “elo hell”[5] as even more toxic than what high ranking players experience. Without the conduct system working, toxic people are allowed to roam free, leaving those who want to experience positivity “fighting a hopeless war” (Le, 2020) as one streamer puts it.

League of Legends is a game that millions of people enjoy, but its toxic community makes the game unbearable. The definition of toxicity is somewhat blurred within the community, but they understand that the use of racial slurs, direct attacks on players, and in-game actions that will lose the game are unacceptable. Streamers that are well known for embracing positivity and an average player identify the reason for the vast majority of players being toxic as Riot Games seemingly put no effort into correcting those who blame others for their mistakes, those who “int”, or any other toxic behavior. But why does all of this behavior in a video game matter in the real world? The behavior seen in the LoL community seems to imitate actions and behaviors seen in life in general (Kanojia, 2019). People may blame other people for their mistakes, use hurtful words to release pent up rage, or even give up and make their situation worse. If we can figure out how to fix the LoL community, it’s possible to find remedies to this problem in the real world.

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[1] Summoner’s Rift is the map/world where the game takes place.

[2] Inting is intentionally dying to the enemy repeatedly, which then gives the enemy extra gold to spend on items that will boost their stats. This is usually done in acts of trolling, frustration, pettiness, or anger.

[3] Griefing is intentionally ruining one’s experience in a game. Usually done through in game actions.

[4] Throwing is preforming actions that can lose a winning position.

[5] Elo Hell are the players who are stuck in average rankings of iron, bronze, silver, and gold. This is known do be the most toxic people within the community.

Work Cited:

Kanojia, A. [HealthyGamerGG] (2020, September 5). Dr. K discusses TOXICITY with LoL Pros (ft. Voyboy, Shiphtur, Sanchovies, SirchEz) [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLbDESxRuLI

Newhookk, “Toxicity SHOULD be in League of Legends”. Reddit. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/8ka56l/toxicity_should_be_in_league_of_legends/

Rivera, L. (April 4, 2021). Personal Interview [Online Chat].