League of Legends is the most popular MOBA around. It garners millions of players, has a huge install base and still gets a ton of viewers on Twitch on a regular basis. However, not everyone who plays the game is willing to follow the rules, but those who don’t might be revealing more than their trolling natures.
It appears that League of Legends has adopted a new policy. Those who register offensive usernames that end up getting reported by the community must go through a series of surveys before they’re allowed to pick a new identity in the game. This, in itself, doesn’t seem particularly harmful. However, it has been discovered that the questions for the surveys come from two psychological tests.
On face value, this fits in with the new policies from Riot in general to try to curb toxic behavior. They have done all sorts of things to encourage cooperative play and punish toxic players. They even have a lead designer of social systems, PhD psychologist Jeffrey Lin, to create these systems. In a statement to Gamasutra, he responded about the survey saying:
When a player has an offensive name and it’s reported by the community, then we change it for them. It’s a standard process for games and online platforms. Players can opt out of the free name change survey and play with their assigned names or they can pay for a name change. The survey helps players think about their behavior and this benefits the entire community
Okay, so the survey is optional and can also be circumvented with a payment for name change instead. I suppose as long as there are ways for people to avoid taking the survey it’s not entirely worrying, but I am still a bit distresses. The results of those surveys could reveal all kinds of sensitive and confidential information about the player – where is that being warehoused and how is it secured? With so much information being leaked, hacked and distributed, it is a bit disconcerting to think that answers to psychological tests could be sent along side account details in the future.
Last Updated: October 19, 2015
Bagel
October 19, 2015 at 08:16
“Okay, so the survey is optional and can also be circumvented with a payment for name change instead.”
Not dirty at all. Thank the lord i play dota.
Brady miaau
October 19, 2015 at 08:23
I applaud the effort, but I too wonder about the data.
Also, is it a psychological problem to hurl obscenities or is it a matter of societal training, aka when a newbie player?
Frik van der Hewerskink
October 19, 2015 at 08:50
Have you actually taken the time to read the surveys ?