
Riot uses League of Legends chatlogs to weed out toxic employees - noahlt
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-06-10-riot-uses-lol-chatlogs-to-weed-out-toxic-employees
======
jtchang
For those not familiar League of Legends is played fairly competitively and
usually 5v5 (10 players per game). The only thing that matters in ranked play
is whether your team wins or loses.

League has one of the most toxic communities I have ever been a part of. The
problem is if even one person decides to troll in a game then the rest of the
players really have no choice.

Also I would like to think if you work for Riot you actively try to improve
the community. Otherwise I'd fire you too. There is a reason Blizzard GMs are
almost routinely respectful.

~~~
navbaker
>The problem is if even one person decides to troll in a game then the rest of
the players really have no choice.

Why is this? I've played online FPS and RTS games for about 15 years now and
have never felt like I "had no choice" when it came to engaging with trolls or
joining in their behavior. Granted my only experience with MOBAs is Heroes of
the Storm, but is LoL that much different?

~~~
Keats
MOBAs (Dota, Lol) are vey dependent on balance.

To use a RTS example since you mention playing them, imagine a 3v3 game. If
one player leaves and it becomes 3v2, the 3 player team has a huge advantage.

Now in MOBAs, you can let the ennemy team kill you or die repeatedly so they
get more resources and xp than you. Imagine for the RTS game that it is
possible and one player starts helping the other team and that game becomes a
4v2. The 2 person team will have pretty much no chance of winning.

Playing a dota game with someone feeding (ie diying intentionally to the other
team) is pretty much a game ender but there is no way to concede so you still
have to play for ~20min with 1% chance of winning.

~~~
codinghorror
it is an issue of player count -- with so few players per team even if one
player is seriously off, you are basically doomed. That's why I prefer games
with 16v16, statistically one player can't determine the whole game.

Unfortunately endemic to all MOBAs :(

~~~
mattmanser
Not really, CS:GO is 5v5, while having one bad player is bad, it's not
crippling to the point that "you are basically doomed".

~~~
fenomas
This is a skillcap issue, surely. One great CS:GO player might easily wipe out
five bumbling opponents; in Dota-likes skill is much less likely to overcome
numbers.

------
doktrin
My first instinct is that this is creepy overreach, and that I'm glad I don't
work for Riot. On the other hand, they have the right to big brother their
staff - and said staff should probably know better. It's definitely one of the
costs of turning a hobby into a job.

That said, still glad I don't work there. To my mind, this sort of company
behavior sets an unpleasant precedent, and I kind of like knowing I have the
freedom to play a game without worrying about being fired for "snarky passive
aggression" or something similar. Maybe I'd feel differently if gaming wasn't
just something I did in my spare time.

~~~
Splines
I find this creepy. I completely agree with policing your employees when they
self-identify themselves as such (e.g., with RiotFoo name tags). This is
normal.

What is not normal is asking prospective employees for their user id and
making decisions based off of the chat logs attached to it. I mean, it makes
sense, but it seems like an invasion of privacy.

Would it be fair for YC to make decisions based off of the HN comment logs of
YC applicants?

Sometimes you do stupid things and I believe you shouldn't be forever in the
future held accountable for what you said in the past.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten)

~~~
zorpner
_Would it be fair for YC to make decisions based off of the HN comment logs of
YC applicants?_

They explicitly do this.

~~~
vonklaus
not parent. I bet they do not, however I think you implicitly agree by
providing it on the application. Maybe in the case of partners being on the
fence, ect, but if not out of privacy probably strictly out of time and number
restrictions. That said, they always speak about how incredible their internal
software is YC and HN has solid management & spam reduction software. I
wouldn't be surprised if they filter for some internal criteria in an
automated fashion.

------
sp332
Here's an article with more detail [https://rework.withgoogle.com/case-
studies/riot-games-assess...](https://rework.withgoogle.com/case-studies/riot-
games-assessing-toxicity/) Only "a couple" of employees were sent packing, and
they were ones with other issues already going on.

~~~
jessaustin
From your link:

 _There are regional nuances, but toxic behaviors include homophobia, racism,
sexism, and other forms of hate speech._

This would indicate that there are regions in which such speech wouldn't be
considered "toxic". I wonder if they've made a map of this?

~~~
Dylan16807
That wording doesn't indicate that. Having nuance does not mean something must
stop being true, and the nuance could apply to _other_ behaviors not in that
small list.

But I think what you're asking is probably true anyway. If you go to a country
where homophobia is the norm, then saying something homophobic isn't really
'toxic' in the same way. It's a more mundane kind of bad.

------
Mendenhall
Pretty crazy to me that they would act "toxic" on their own companies game,
personal account or not. In my opinion thats just asking for trouble.

~~~
ionforce
I'd think that toxic people don't tend to be long-term thinkers.

~~~
astrobe_
It's not that simple. You can be a smart guy but a helpless sore loser, be one
of those toxic players and be ashamed of yourself if someone would have you
read your chat logs after the fact.

Those real time games are very immersive, and players can easily let their
ugly true self out if they aren't careful. And that's why Riot is interested
in their potential employees' chat logs.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
What they're saying is that they don't want their game to be a place where you
can vent or relieve stress.

It's just another analog for meatspace, where you have to go around pretending
to be nice to people who probably don't deserve it.

~~~
rincebrain
You don't necessarily have to be actively kind to people.

You do, however, have to not be actively hostile.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
This is a video game, not real life.

One that though I don't play it, I take it that it simulates hostility
(violence, fighting, etc). If I'm mistaken there, I welcome correction.

So the hostility doesn't have any of the harm that we associate with real-
world hostility, but occurs within a video game that is modeled on
hostility... and I'm not supposed to be hostile?

What, do avatars just wander around basket-weaving and finger-painting in
League of Legends? It's bizarre. God, I worry that I need to rush off and
delete my Facebook account, lest my own employers get any strange ideas.

~~~
srdev
No, hostility in the context of playing the game is fine. Its a PvP game so
that wouldn't be a tenable policy. You can go and kill the other team all you
want. Poor behavior in the in-game chat or metagame is whats at issue here:
sending other people messages to insult them, throwing matches on purpose to
"get back" at your team, being a poor sport, etc.

Edit: Here's an analogy. Consider if you were playing a basketball game and
one of the players slapped the ball out of his teammate's hand and started
screaming in his face about how he s a terrible player and should have been
aborted. That's the sort of behavior we're talking about.

------
joshmn
I'm interested to see how Blizzard is going to handle its Overwatch community.
It's very likely Overwatch will become incredibly competitive, and I don't
think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene (competitive WoW, anyone?)

Time will tell.

~~~
mbell
> I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene

I'd argue that Blizzard was largely responsible for defining modern eSports.
Blizzard games helped drive the creation of many of the gaming leagues,
ESL/IEM started with Warcraft III and the original Counter-Strike. Starcraft
and Starcraft 2 had huge competitive communities in their prime and really
drove the growth of eSports.

Starcraft 2 is tapering off today but Hearthstone is huge and Heroes of the
Storm, while not nearly as popular as LoL/Dota2 is still built as a
competitive game.

~~~
errantspark
I'm curious how you're evaluating a game being competitive vs. not. Maybe my
bar is just set a lot higher but I don't really see HotS as being a game
that's really intended as a competitive game.

I'd say Starcraft, SSBM, DotA, Q3 CPMA/Reflex are games that are geared toward
competitive play. Whereas HotS, LoL and Overwatch seem much more aimed at
being fun and satisfying to play for the average person who isn't interested
in sinking 40 hours into a game just to learn basic skills like how to strafe
jump or tech/wave dash.

I'm not really trying to push a particular viewpoint though, just curious if
you'd expand on what YOU think makes a game competitive?

~~~
mbell
As a baseline I'd say that any game where the 'prime content' is ranked PvP it
is a competitive game. Sure HotS and LoL have non-ranked play but they aren't
the focus of the game.

Another simple metric is to look at eSport tournaments by prize pool. If
people are playing the game in an attempt to win hundreds of thousands or
millions of dollars, it's a competitive game.

I get the impression that you are conflating 'competitive' with 'difficult'.

~~~
jzelinskie
Ranked play is nothing other than a mechanic to match you with players of
equal skill at a game. I posit that maybe every multiplayer game should have
it, even cooperative games, since it removes the terrible experience that is
having experienced players play with brand new ones.

I understand your point about conflating "competitive" and "difficult", but
there is a reason why people couple the concepts together: there's no point in
competitively playing a game with a low skill ceiling. An extremely contrived
example of this: Rock-Paper-Scissors is a competitive, PvP game and yet no one
would ever host tournaments for it because of the ridiculously low skill
ceiling; there's not enough to differentiate an experienced player from a
brand new one.

~~~
mbell
> Ranked play is nothing other than a mechanic to match you with players of
> equal skill at a game.

Almost all such games maintain some sort of per player rating (ELOish usually)
which is separate from ranked play and often hidden. You certainly don't need
to play ranked modes just to be paired with similar skill level players.

> there's no point in competitively playing a game with a low skill ceiling.

Sure, but in combination with previous comment your inference appears to be
that HotS, LoL and Overwatch are low skill cap games. I'm curious what your
argument for that is. Using LoL as an example the overall ELO distribution is
extremely bottom heavy with a smooth taper to the top; vastly more players in
lower ranks than higher despite having consistent promotion rules. A ranking
for a low skill cap game would be expected to have a bunching at the top as
the skill cap is quickly reached and the outcome becomes more random.

One thing these 3 games do have in common is a low barrier to entry, but I see
no correlation between that and skill cap in video games or traditional
sports. e.g. a very young child can start to play soccer, but that doesn't
mean soccer has a low skill cap.

------
frankmcsherry
"... a quarter of all fired employees had been unpleasant players. Toxic
players tended to be toxic employees, even if the reverse wasn't always true."

Isn't this saying the opposite?

~~~
jessriedel
I don't think so. A = fired employees. B = unpleasant players. B is contained
within A, so B implies A ("Toxic players tended to be toxic employees") but
not the reverse.

~~~
frankmcsherry
We only have that P[B|A] = 1/4; we don't know anything about P[A|B] without
more info.

It could totally be that all non-fired employees are toxic, and viciously went
after their weaker colleagues by having them fired! I guess that would make
them toxic, but whatever.

~~~
Dylan16807
And to make it even more complex, we have no idea what portion of the fired
employees were toxic. You can be fired for a lot of reasons.

------
developer2
The submission site doesn't allow comments from "non-gaming employees", so I
will post a response comment here, aimed at Feliz whose comment you can read
in the submission site's comments.

\---

@Feliz, that is exactly the type of indoctrinated response one would expect
from a brainwashed, ass-kissing employee. An employer should _never_ be
looking into personal lives. Look up what Henry Ford did to his employees for
a perfect example of how completely insane it is. Your last paragraph comes
across as an egotistical sociopath who is dictating how everyone else should
behave.

The stat quoted is that it was discovered that 25% of toxic players were
determined to be underperforming employees. That's actually a fairly low
percentage; I bet that 25% of employees who fell into the non-toxic player
pool would also fall under the umbrella of "toxic employees". Correlation does
not equal causation.

Honestly, you sound like someone posting with your real name in hopes that
your managers will see your comment and promote you, or at least look upon you
favorably compared to your silent coworkers. Taking an activity that employees
partake in during their free time to determine employment status is a
disgusting practice that should not be permitted under the law.

------
zZorgz
Employees aside, toxic nature is inevitable for competitive online games that
allow for open communication. To "fix" this may mean to make chat
communication closed, or opt-in with friends, or only have a select few chat
rooms with heavy moderation, or only allow a select number of phrases, etc. It
would require re-thinking how chat communication in games should work,
something that say Nintendo and Disney put effort into.

~~~
blakeyrat
MOBA games have an additional challenge in that if one player isn't as strong
as the others, he actually makes the opposing team _stronger_.

If I'm playing, say, MechWarrior Online, and my Catapult K2 is killed by the
enemy, that doesn't make the weapons of all the enemy mechs suddenly do more
damage. But that's exactly how MOBA games work.

So it seems to me that the game design pretty much encourages this kind of
behavior.

------
smadge
What terrible working conditions. Management monitors your off duty leisure
activity and uses that to evaluate your on duty performance.

~~~
decwakeboarder
Riot employees are paid to play (on a Riot "sponsored" account). Just like
company email, chat, or any other service, it should be assumed that it's
going to be monitored.

If Riot employees want to troll on LoL, they probably shouldn't do it on a
company account.

~~~
developer2
It's specified in the article that new employees (who do not have an employee
account yet) are expected to provide their League username so it can be
inspected.

This has nothing to do with "representing the company via an official
channel"; this is directly an invasion of privacy of employees' private lives,
for the purpose of weeding out those who don't "fit the company culture".

------
Pinatubo
Are Riot employees required to play LoL? Are they identified as Riot employees
in-game and expected to be ambassadors for the company?

~~~
noxToken
I don't know if they're required to play, but Riot employees who queue up and
get matched typically are named Riot${something}. I have heard that users who
aren't Riot employees with Riot in their name can have their handle renamed.

~~~
ylou
I don't think you can have "Riot" in your handle at all unless you're an
employee.

------
Pfhreak
Saying nothing about the practice or the article, but is this title accurate?
From what I read, the employees were brought into discussions about their
behavior, and were not fired.

(Though the article does present that some fired employees were toxic, it was
not insinuated that they were fired based on this analysis.)

Edit: Yes, later in the article, it does suggest some employees were let go.

------
stormbrew
Couldn't this have a high risk of overfitting (not sure if that's exactly the
right word, but I think it conveys the idea) when using it as a predictive or
proactive measure? Just because you observe a correlation in the past doesn't
mean it will continue into the future, and there's a lot resting on this
prediction.

~~~
macintux
It sounds like Riot handled this very well: rather than just fire people based
on their analysis, they sat down with the employees to discuss the matter.

So, yes, making an irrevocable decision based on one ambiguous data point is a
bad idea, but using it as an indicator that a conversation should take place
strikes me as wise.

------
rhinoceraptor
It seems just a little creepy that you are required to give up your in-game
username as a condition of employment.

~~~
Zikes
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. In a competitive online scene, any remote
potential for an unfair advantage should be taken very seriously. To ensure
that their employees aren't using insider knowledge, tools, or access to gain
an unfair advantage, they'd have to know what their employees' accounts are.
To do otherwise would potentially undermine the company's very business.

~~~
astrobe_
You got it backwards: they are asking for in-game name so they can check their
_past_ chat logs and/or current "reputation" (there's an in-game system that
allows other players to give you reputation rewards).

Once you get the job, you could simply create a new account to do whatever you
want. Using it to get a competitive advantage for yourself wouldn't be very
smart though, because you would have to sign up with your real name for an
event if you want to make money from that. The best option would be to sell
advantages to other players, like boosting their ranks or unlocking in-game
goodies.

------
onetwotree
MOBAs like LoL and Dota2 do bring out the worst in many people, but in a few
they bring out the best - the people who go harder when faced with adversity,
who offer gentle, constructive advice and assistance to teammates who are
doing badly, and keep their spirits up throughout the worst of defeats.

These are exactly the traits I want in coworkers.

The opposite - blaming everyone but yourself when your team is losing, raging
at people who make honest mistakes, playing selfishly, and so on, are the
traits I don't want.

Edit: this is all very problematic of course, but if I noticed that someone my
company was thinking about hiring was one of my Dota2 friends, I'd put in a
good word based on their in game behavior.

------
sprkyco
[https://zedshaw.com/2016/06/10/riot-games-is-violating-
calif...](https://zedshaw.com/2016/06/10/riot-games-is-violating-california-
employment-law/)

------
protomyth
So, what prevents Riot from selling this information to other companies?

~~~
doktrin
Nothing whatsoever, assuming this isn't somehow covered by the game's EULA.

~~~
protomyth
I sense an amazing income opportunity for about to be closed games. Its not
like they have to tell you they did it anyway. I'm sure some of those PvP
conversations would be sought after by many interested parties.

[to the down voters: I'll take bets on when this will happen]

------
mbesto
Uhh, isn't this illegal?

~~~
squarejaw
Looks like it is. [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=00001-01000&file=980)

~~~
techthroway443
Nope.

This article is specifically addressing social media accounts. Trying to lump
your 'gamer tag' under that section is pretty sleazy.

~~~
mbesto
> _" social media" means an electronic service or account, or electronic
> content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs,
> video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or
> accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations._

Uh, if I play a game ("electronic service or account") and send someone else a
message in chat ("instant and text message") then I'm pretty damn sure that is
covered under that legislation. However, IANAL.

> _under that section is pretty sleazy._

I guess "being sleazy" means you don't care about data privacy then huh?

------
outworlder
I hope CCP doesn't do anything like that with their employees. Otherwise, they
would all be fired. Or all promoted.

In some games(taking Eve Online as an example), being a dick is just part of
the game. As long as you are not doing it in any professional capacity, or
insulting people (as opposed to their in-game persona).

------
alexandercrohde
This is ridiculous. Now that people know they're being monitored they will
make say nice shit on their work accounts and make non-work accounts where
they can "be themselves." The system is now useless.

------
wnevets
Riot has a history of doing sleazy business dealings. I wouldn't be surprised
if trolling wasn't just an excuse to get rid of these employees.

~~~
enraged_camel
What kinds of sleazy business dealings? Can you give some specific examples,
preferably with sources to back them up?

~~~
nonanako
Shuttering the dota community site/forum permanently with no warning and
replacing it with a League of Legends ad would be a good start.

[http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/permastun/blog/sabotage-
and...](http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/permastun/blog/sabotage-and-
treachery-why-dota-players-hate-riot-/102580/)

~~~
enraged_camel
The website dota-allstars was owned by Mescon, and it was acquired by Riot
when he was hired by them. At that point, it became their property and they
were free to do whatever they wanted, and they chose to display an ad for
their main product. They then sold the website to Blizzard.

How is that sleazy?

I hope you aren't offended by this but all this sounds like some incredibly
stupid MOBA/e-sports drama.

~~~
bllguo
"Sleazy" isn't necessarily "illegal." All you have pointed out is that they
were able and within their rights to do what they did. Sure, nobody disputed
that. The discussion is about the morality of the move.

And come on, why the unnecessary last comment

------
ffn
Honestly I don't have an opinion on the creepiness / necessity of riot doing
this... but anyone else notice how common the dichotomy between "forced
politeness" and "free toxicity" occurs in naturally occurring human
interactions?

In MOBA games, we have DotA versus LoL

In internet forums, we have 4chan versus Reddit

In nations, we have USA versus China

And even in traditional families, we have dad versus mom

For some reason, even though freedom and structure are polar opposites, as
humans we apparently demand access to both.

~~~
draw_down
Not really sure what you mean with those examples.

------
davesque
Seems like a slippery slope. For example, what if these "troll" employees were
grumpy because of some on-the-job stress factor? Then, by dismissing those
employees, Riot would be hurting its chances of diagnosing and solving that
problem i.e. they would be treating the symptom but not the cause. I dunno.
Just food for thought.

~~~
chrischen
No amount of stress is excuse for bad behavior just like no amount of alcohol
is excuse for rape, drunk driving, involuntary manslaughter, etc.

~~~
Veratyr
Your analogy isn't particularly good, as alcohol is something a person makes a
choice to engage in, fully aware of the dangers. You can't know how stressful
a job or project will be before you take it. Sometimes a stress inducing
change (like management) can happen against your will.

And regardless of whether bad behavior can be excused, sometimes the most net
good comes from from removing the stress rather than the person.

I'd further argue that with enough stress bad behavior can be induced in
anyone. The bad consequences of the bad behavior should really fall on the
person responsible for the stress.

------
SFJulie
The world of companies looks like ranked LoL. Managers really look likes most
are trolls

------
Pica_soO
Surely, managements accounts where checked too?

------
multinglets
If I worked at Riot, I would go quit right now.

~~~
vonklaus
I respect the principle. For me it hinges on how much of this was communicated
to the employee and in what way. If they explicitly told you, and put it into
an employee contract at least it would be a consideration. If it was either
not explicitly comunicated by a human it would be a bad overreach, especially
for a non riot handle. I think the degree of transparency & communication is
important, and whether you represent the company (e.g. Riot handled accts).

That said, random employee survellience is extremely fucked up, and I would
not condone it.

------
fapjacks
> "Pretty much everyone we spoke with was appalled at their own behaviour. We
> actually received some essays from employees vowing to change their ways and
> become not just more considerate gamers but better people,"

Yeah, right. Because that's how you fix toxic behavior. You can just show them
they're being assholes. This definitely has nothing to do with threatening
their jobs, or anything like that. /s

