League of Legends Is Adding an Option to Report and Mute People in Champion Select

League of Legends players who've found themselves victims to abuse before the game even truly begins in champion select will soon be able to take action against offenders as soon as they start in on others. Riot Games announced this week that it plans to add the options to report other players and champion select as well as the ability to mute them so that you can take care of both problems at once if someone's harassing players and you don't want to see any more of it. The feature is planned for some time late in the second quarter of the year and is part of a larger effort to combat negative player behavior.

Though the feature will immediately give players the option to report players when it's added, it'll be awhile longer before the reported players start receiving punishments for their behavior in champion select. Riot said the first reports from the updated system will be used to establish a baseline for player behavior in champion select which will then help create the punishment system to take action against the reported players.

"Disruptive behavior in Champ Select is a problem that players have very few ways to deal with," Riot said. "Starting around late Q2 we're going to give you the ability to report disruptive players in Champ Select. First, these reports will be used to establish a data foundation for champ select behavior. Then, once we've got enough data to identify different types of behavior accurately, we'll deploy a punishment system."

Quicker than that feature will come an improved report feedback system that's already available in North America. Through this updated system, players should see more notifications from the client when a player they reported has been punished. In the moderate term, Riot said it'd be taking a look at players who intentionally try to lose games and being able to have automated systems better distinguish between those who are purposely throwing and others who are just having a bad game.

While these changes have surely been in the works for a while now given that part of them is available now, the larger post these details were housed in follows a series of discussions spurred on by a video from League streamer Voyboy titled "The Sad State of League Solo Q." The video discussed toxicity and other problems in League and called on Riot to address the problems. Riot responded earlier in the week and said Voyboy and other players' thoughts had been heard.