Have You Received Your Free League of Legends Gift Yet?

Riot had a banner year with their League of Legends successes in 2014.

Their reign over the e-sports world has only grown in size and scope. They had one of their biggest and most competitive seasons and championship ever, and have added even more people into their ranks. But with new players and highly competitive sports come the bad eggs in the bunch.

League of Legends will be rewarding positive players with a free Mystery Skin due to being good sports throughout 2014. The rewards will hopefully be pushed out in the next few weeks for all players who qualify. To qualify, you must not have had a chat restriction, restriction to ranked match participation, no 14-day bans, or permanent bans. You also have to be at least level 5 on the qualifying account’s Riot profile, and you must have at least 10 custom skins that you don’t already have. The rewards won’t be limited to skins either, as Jeffrey “Lyte” Lin details in a post on Reddit.

Not every surprise will be a mystery gift. Every surprise will differ in magnitude, and be tailored to different players. For example, the last surprise was an IP Boost which was mainly beneficial for newer players still building out their champion pools. Other surprises may include collectibles like unique summoner icons (which we tried before with the Santa Baron icon).

Lin goes on to mention that this is not simply a deterministic achievement for players to earn. “It isn’t some kind of achievement system where you are sportsmanlike for your next 10 games… If you design a system like this, players will simply behave for 10 games, unlock their mystery gift and go back to their normal ways.” The reward will come randomly in it’s own time, so long as you meet the qualifications.

Sounds pretty easy to earn these rewards, right? So long as you haven’t been a jerk while playing League of Legends, you get free stuff! While this may seem like a charitable reach to positive players – and it is – the effort to extend this gratitude on the part of Riot is a telling sign to the state of the League of Legends community.

Harsh Truths About League of Legend‘s Community

Toxicity in the League of Legends community is a well documented trend. While toxic communities are nothing new to online games, League of Legends toxicity reaches a particularly remarkable level of rage and anger. Riot Games has been a consistent advocate of squashing toxicity in League of Legends, although their results vary greatly. The company reports that 95% of players in 2014 never received a punishment of any kind, which speaks to the success of their efforts.

Unfortunately for Riot, there are 67 million players who play League of Legends monthly (as of January 2014). 5% of that total comes to roughly 3.35 million players who have been punished in one form or the next, and that’s a huge number. Moreover, 1% of the population in the League of Legends community has had their punishments escalated to either a 14-day ban or permanent ban. When taking into account the fact that from 5-10 players at any given time will directly experience toxic, even harassing behavior by another player, or otherwise experience a game that is hampered or brought down by bannable offenses – such as leaving games or intentionally aiding the opposing team – the actions of one aberrant player can have long-lasting effects on many players.

“There’s a psychological phenomenon called negativity bias,” Jeffrey “Lyte” Lin recently explained in an interview with Kotaku. “People tend to recall negative events more prominently compared to positive events. In fact, some scientists suggest that you need about four positive events to equal the impact of one negative event.” It is therefore is no surprise that one of League of Legends largest problems and biggest concerns remains the toxic elements of their community.

Riot Reforms

Riot is very outspoken on its three-sided effort to combat toxicity: Reform, Punishment, and Rewards. Using messaging to players to let them know they’ve made an error and enforcing those errors with more severe punishments if negative behavior continues has all been part of reform in League of Legends so far. With Rewards, Riot will be addressing the non-toxic elements. This not only builds up positive experiences for positive players, but also can potentially use positive forms of peer-pressure to make the deviant players in Riot’s playerbase to strive harder to earn their rewards.

The team also likes to spotlight positive behavior on the Riot forums, and has already given tangible rewards such as their Santa Baron summoner icon. This new effort to reward players with tangible gifts is all part of the larger plan to not only regulate negative elements, but also praise positive people who make up the vast majority of League of Legends players.

For those who recently got into League of Legends, the difficulties adjusting to the less-than-positive parts of the community can sometimes be daunting. Seeing Riot consistently attempting to punish wrongdoers and now give gifts to reward good ones will hopefully keep spirits up for players throughout some of their more disappointing matches.