The Gaming World Will Soon Have Player-Run Police Surveillance
Updated
Real-life censorship is alarming enough, but what about censorship in the gaming world? It’s not a topic often considered. Still, with roughly 191 million Americans playing video games weekly, is anyone policing their behavior? In less than a month, video gaming developer and publisher Riot Games intends to. The Los Angeles-based company—owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent—recently updated its terms of service (ToS) to give itself the right to censor and punish users for “off-platform conduct.” Creators have until January 3, 2025, to align their content with the new ToS, which includes this new rule.
What exactly does this mean? Although vague, coming soon, players can be penalized for off-platform bad behavior reported by other players on streams across Riot’s titles. Riot is “defining” what off-platform means in broad terms that are open to interpretation, stating that off-platform is “the various places that touch (users’) gaming experience.” Riot goes on to explain:
“This update applies very specifically and only to content where Riot’s games are the background of the content produced. Though we aren’t going to proactively monitor everything that happens across social media, it is now within our rights to issue penalties in-game when that content is brought to our attention.”
Offering an example of the surveillance coming in the new year, Riot notes that if a creator uses hateful slurs about an opposing player or teammate on their stream but not in the game over chat or voice comms, the company can still issue a penalty as if that behavior occurred in-game. In other words, if a player says or does things that break Riot’s ToS while they are broadcasting or creating content about its games, Riot can restrict access to their accounts and suspend their Partner privileges if they are a part of their Partner Program.
According to Riot Games, they don’t plan to “proactively” search for social media violations. Instead, players can report issues about other players’ behavior on a live stream in which one of its games serves as “the background of the content produced.” According to the new ToS, after reporting by a player who feels mistreated, if Riot determines that the player in question violated its ToS, Riot has the freedom to issue a penalty “as if the behavior occurred in the game.”
In addition to policing its players’ off-platform conduct, the updated ToS also focuses on “stream sniping,” where a player’s live broadcast is exploited to give another player an unfair advantage and harass the broadcaster and their teammates in-game. Riot notes that it is currently testing penalties for these violations on a limited scale with a handful of English-speaking Valorant creators.
The updated ToS allows Riot to impose multiple penalties or bans for vague offenses, including “seriously egregious violations,” including, “something painful,” or “problematic behavior.” Players with repeat violations could be permanently banned from all Riot Games accounts. According to Valorant director Joe Ziegler, the goal of the Riot update is to prevent “the sort of toxicity seen in League of Legends.”
Previous updates to Riot Games’ ToS have explored methods of controlling what the company calls offensive and harmful behavior in its games. Valorant Studio Head and Riot Senior Vice President Anna Donlon admitted in May that the company “absolutely needs to do better” in protecting players. As Eurogamer reported, she outlined planned improvements, including introducing stricter penalties and enhancing manual review processes for reported incidents.
In May 2024, Donolon outlined the upcoming changes, which she stressed are designed “to make our community a better place.” At the time, she remarked that even though the development team had no plans to “sanitize gaming” or suppress harmful banter, players should not be expected to “grow a thicker skin” when playing video games. She added that since launching its game Valorant—especially with the addition of voice comms—the company has been aware that “fighting in-game harassment was going to be something we need to prioritize.” Calling in-game harassment “one of the most challenging issues” that the company will face, Donolon remarked:
“Too often it takes someone experiencing the worst behaviours—something egregious, something painful, something threatening for us to better understand where the gaps in our systems and processes are. And that’s exactly what we’re experiencing and addressing right now.”
Well, folks, along with the much anticipated GTA 6 rumored to be going woke with DEI employee certification, the censorship police of the online gaming world have arrived. In May, setting the stage for its player-run surveillance state that becomes active after January 3, 2025, Riot outlined five key measures to protect players who feel threatened. Translating those specific actions using its TLDR moniker, which, apparently, is for gamers who can’t or won’t read the fine print (TLDR means “too long, didn’t read”), Riot stated in a nutshell:
“TLDR: we are taking actions to improve the state of player behavior in the game. If you want to make evil statements under the guise of “sh*t talk,” you aren’t welcome here.”