Nasty players won’t be able to get new League of Legends loot

Toxic League of Legends players will be locked out of new content for the MOBA thanks to a new update.

Included as part of Riot Games’ 2016 additions to the title – said to be the biggest in six years – the new loot system provides players with chests and keys at the end of a match.

The two can be combined to unlock items including hero rentals, skins and full characters, or recycled to craft additional equipment.

But there’s a catch: if you’ve been deemed as ‘toxic’ to the community, you won’t be able to grab the free drops.

“If you’re a player who is punished for toxicity or intentional feeding or so on, you can’t get loot,” lead game designer of social systems Jeffrey Lin explained to Polygon.

“We’ve never been able to give skins for free before in League of Legends, so this is our way of saying: ‘Hey, if you’re a positive player in the game, here’s your way of earning something just for playing the game and being awesome.’”

It’s not the first step that Riot has taken towards combatting nasty behaviour – earlier this year it similarly withheld rewards from those causing problems among its user base.

It looks like Riot is winning the battle, too, with Lin revealing earlier this year that instances of ‘homophobia, sexism and racism’ had fallen to less than two per cent.

However, there’s still work to be done, he said this week, hinting that Riot could implement even harsher punishments should miscreants fail to learn the error of their ways.

“We’ve never done a thing before where negative players don’t have access to an entire system,” he explained.

“We want to see what global sentiment and feedback is on that. We’ll take some time to look at that and make some changes if necessary.”