LoL developers have made a statement about the list of blocked words and what happens when someone uses them while playing.
There has been a lot of talk recently about censoring chat in League of Legends, as Riot, as part of its fight against toxic behavior, announced that it was introducing live message monitoring, meaning that the developers want to mute people who speak in an offensive way on a regular basis.
Many players feared that the system wouldn’t work, and instead of fighting toxicity, it would punish people who didn’t actually do anything wrong. Riot decided to talk a bit about how muting players works and what the blocked words list is all about.
What happens when players use words on the blocked list?
The makers of League of Legends have explained what blocked words are and how live player muting works.
There are just some things you shouldn’t really say to another living, breathing fellow human being. Some of those things are somewhat innocuous words combined in a specific context with enough typos that our system can’t always catch.
However, some of those things are blatant words that we can put into a handy Blocked List that we can use to catch the most blatantly offensive offenses.
WHAT’S A BLOCKED LIST WORD?
We won’t publish this list. Just think extremely harmful, offensive, or abusive. Not your typical curse word.
I USED A BLOCKED LIST WORD! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME?
You’ll be instantly muted for the rest of the game.
Our system intercepts your entire message before it’s even sent, and you will receive this information in the chat:
- Your message contained zero-tolerance language and was not sent. You are muted for the rest of the game and will no longer be able to see any chat messages.
Your teammates will receive the following message, so they’re aware your communication is limited:
- We’ve filtered a message from [PlayerName] for containing zero-tolerance language. They are muted for the rest of the game and will no longer see any chat messages.
Your teammates cannot manually unmute you.
You won’t receive any other automatic penalties and this won’t affect your Honor level, but if a player reports you, your account will be assessed for further penalties.
OK, IF I’M MUTED AND CAN’T READ THE CHAT, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO STRATEGIZE WITH MY TEAM?
You can still see and use pings!
To avoid system mutes in the future, remember to be civil towards your fellow League players. You’re a team, after all. Remember that’s a fellow human with a whole, textured, nuanced life that you’re talking to on the other side of that chat! We always hope they’ll extend that same courtesy to you so everyone can focus on doing their best.
I SAW SOMEONE GET MUTED FOR SAYING A SWEAR WORD–DO WE GET MUTED FOR ANY CURSE WORDS NOW?
No, random curses are not likely to trigger the system. If you saw the message, that wasn’t the one that triggered the mute; messages that would trigger the mute are intercepted so you won’t see them.