/dev: Bans for Severely Abusive Chat

Hey everyone. We have an update on our in-game behavioral systems and how we’ll be applying bans for certain behavior in game.

Over the past year, we’ve been cracking down on bad actors for game ruining behavior such as inting and griefing, champion select hostage-taking, and smurfing or account sharing. Our next step in this work is that starting in patch 26.5 we’re going to start issuing gameplay bans for severely disruptive comms, rather than just chat bans. As mentioned in the recent Community Pact rollout, you’ll need to play with respect or play something else.

We want League to be a game where you don’t have to wonder if someone’s going to threaten anyone with violence or use hate speech in chat. A point of feedback we’ve heard from you is that our current comms penalty policy doesn’t align with your expectations, and it feels wrong to see players who said awful things queuing up for more games immediately, which we agree with. We already issue bans when disruptive gameplay or cheating are detected, and we’re now going to treat comms similarly. Essentially, if someone can’t play League without egregiously harassing other players, they aren’t going to be allowed to play it. 

To be clear, this isn’t about mild flame like “idiot jungler why aren’t you ganking my lane” (though that’s not cool either, and there will be punishments if you say that enough). We’re looking to actively punish severe offenses like hate speech, threats of violence, or severe aggression. This type of behavior isn’t tolerated in League.

We’re rolling this change out now because we’re confident in our detection models. We also have plans to roll this out to DMs as well, so you’ll be able to report and take action against players who move from in-game chat to DMs after the fact. We’re planning on shipping this in 2026, and will share more details when we have a finalized timeline.

Like everything we do, there’s still room for improvement. But for now, we hope that getting these bad actors out of your games will lead to League being a better, more inclusive place for everyone who calls the Rift (or the Murder Bridge or the Arena) home.