Abel Pombo Caamaño

I get that a lot of people follow me for "teehee funny internet guy dunks on bad guys", but I want to make something extremely clear about what has to come after that. This is something I talk about with people a lot. The main reason I am here on Twitter talking with all of y'all is to make the game better. Part of that is listening and learning and connecting the community to the dev team in the ways that I'm able to, and I'll continue to do that as much as my time allows. But a big part of my day job is specifically focused on player behavior and toxicity, so I want to talk about that specifically right now. League is too good of a game to let a small number of jerks ruin it for everyone else. Our best guess is that less than 1% of people who play League are just going to be jerks no matter what, and our view is that we should get better at getting those people out of the game (and we've been doing that for the last year, and that work will continue). It is also obviously true that more than 1% of people currently playing League behave in ways that aren't great. Our view is that those people are NOT going to be jerks no matter what. They will be responsive to incentives and social norms and pressure. I've talked with quite a few people who have said things like "I question why it's worth it to follow the rules when I see people break the rules without consequence." And when I see and talk to people who occasionally act out in ways that are antisocial, what they tell me is that they aren't always like this, and that they don't recognize themselves in the way that they're acting at their worst. Those people are 100% capable of change - both for better and for worse. Part of why I'm out here doing a bunch of stuff in public is because we want y'all to see that we're actively working on improving these behaviors, and also: we're more effective if we do that together. This is meant to do three things: 1. We want to give energy to people who get tired of watching jerks do jerk things, and who get tired of reporting them and who get tired of doing the work of emotionally regulating themselves instead of ruining games or typing whatever comes into their mind. We want them to know that the good world they want to live in is the one we - the entire dev team, all of Riot - want to create. 2. We want to send a clear signal to jerks that their choices are not consequence-free and that we are working to make that more and more true every day. 3. We want to make it clear for people who are in the middle - not perfect, but they do their best - that being better is worth it. That being part of a community that treats each other with respect and fairness is work, yeah, but it's work worth doing, because the reward is that your community has shared values like respect and fairness, and you then get to expect to be treated with respect and fairness by those around you. Part of doing that work is shifting social norms around the acceptability of doing antisocial things. We've seen people do that more and more, which is great. We love that. Ultimately, communities must enforce the norms that they want to be held to. The next part is harder, and this is where writing this all is coming from. Part of what MUST happen in that process is that communities have to be able and willing to encourage and support the people who do reform. If people don't reform and keep doing shitty things, sure, dunk on them, call them out, whatever. But if someone is going to say "hey, yes, this was shitty, I'm going to do different things now", and then they actually change how they treat others? Encourage them! Social pressure works both ways. We all, collectively, get to decide what community we want to live in every day, and our actions contribute to that. They shape who we are, and they shape the realities of the people around us, and they affect how the people around us think about what they can expect and whether doing the hard, right thing is worth it. We want more and more people to see that there is lasting value in doing the hard, right things that make the League community a better place.