Riot standardise punishments for pro League of Legends players

Riot Games has introduced new rulesets regarding penalties incurred by their top players in the League of Legends professional community.

The changes comprise of a new penalty index, to more easily determine the severity of an infraction, and a penalty tracker which shows the public all rulings made throughout a season.

Riot’s aim with the changes is ‘to offer a clear and transparent set of guidelines for players and teams to be able to fully understand the consequences of any rules broken’, according to the announcement post by Director of eSports, Whalen Rozelle.

Rozelle also says that communication between the developer and the players and organisations who compete in their tournaments will be improved by the introduction of a Pro Player Panel.

“We’ll proactively discuss league rules and best practices (amongst other things) regularly with this group,” Rozelle wrote, “as well as meet individually with players who’ve been penalized to make sure they have an opportunity to ask for clarification about potential penalties and how they can avoid them in the future.”

The aim of the changes is to make the circumstances of penalisation clear in order to further deter pro players and other member of the community from falling foul of the rules.

Rozelle is also hoping that the index of penalties-split into minor infractions of less than three-month suspensions and major breaches of conduct that threaten the game’s integrity-will speed up the process of issuing punishments.

When Cloud9’s Hai Du Lam was seen on-camera giving the middle finger towards the stage on the final day of the World Championship Groups last year, the team took 10 days to issue a ?500 fine.