Riot Games uses its employee’s League of Legends chat logs to spot bad behavior

Toxicity, abuse, bad language. These are, unfortunately, a staple of playing games online. Not only in League of Legends but in general. Now Riot Games is trying to fix their role in how this perpetuates — by digging into the past.

Riot Games is examining its own game, but also its employees. They determined that employees who were abusive in-game tended to correlate with negative behavior outside of League of Legends.

Riot took a proactive approach by examining the chat logs of their employees and speaking to them individually where applicable. Engadget spoke with Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar, Riot Games’ head of talent to explain how the process went.

"We actually received some essays from employees vowing to change their ways and become not just more considerate gamers, but better people." The chat logs also factored in the decision to fire some employees who had presented "serious problems" before.

When your existence as a company exists online it’s vitally important to create a culture. Riot is fostering one where abuse is not tolerated, so ensuring its employees share that vision is of vital importance.

A lot of people might balk at the idea of their anonymous Internet personas having real-world consequences, but Riot’s analysis showed that people who were abusive on the Internet proved to be more problematic employees. Change needs to start at the top, and Riot seems committed to that.