Ranked games need GM presence. (solution for afk/trolls/feeders/griefing/abuse)

Most online games have some form of GMs, but I can't say I've ever seen or heard of them in LoL. As an avid game developer myself, I've thought about how this could be properly executed in a massive online game. How can we solve the issue of afkers? Feeders? Trolls and harassment?

No automated system can possibly detect and handle all of this properly. However, I think a combination of early detection and GM presence can fix everything. Hear me out:

Initial: Create checks in the game to detect the following:

~ A player disconnecting from the match for longer than 3 minutes (or a set amount of time) ~ A player dying repeatedly in a short span of time (to detect REAL feeding) ~ A player using a lot of profanity ~ Etc

1. The game would then flag specific matches and put a priority value associated with the flag

2. Riot GM would then have a tool that allows them to see all flagged games and sort them based on priority

3. Riot GM could then spectate into these games, to investigate the issue

4. If Riot GM finds that the issue is valid, then appropriate actions can be taken, for example:

~ The game detects a player who has died multiple times in a short time span. The game sends a flag to the report system with a medium/high priority ~ The Riot GM looks at their report list and sees the flag on this game. They jump in to spectate. ~ The Riot GM spectates the player in question, and notes that the player is literally running down mid lane into the enemy to feed over and over ~ The Riot GM then communicates to the other players in the match via chat to indicate that the player is going to be punished, and the game is going to be disbanded if the affected team agrees. ~ The Riot GM can then disband the game and give the appropriate punishment to the feeding player.

In order to keep down the amount of staff needed to handle this operation, the game could cluster matches for each Riot GM. If you have 1000 live ranked games and 10 Riot GMs, then the game could cluster 100 games per Riot GM. Since most of those games should be going off without a hitch, the Riot GM maybe has to deal with a small handful of those per hour. Each assessment and appropriate punishments should only take 5-8 minutes at most, meaning that a single Riot GM could keep an eye on hundreds of active games.

This is a low cost and rather simple initial programming setup that could fix a huge problem with this game overnight.

You get the efficiency of scripted initial detection, with the judgement and eyes of a human staff member.

Each time a Riot GM completes an investigation, a report could be saved for logging purposes. So in the above example, the Riot GM would have their staff name logged, along with the actions they took to the specific player account, and the reason for said actions. This way if the punished player complains, a manager could look into the report and see if the actions were correct.

Riot GMs would have a pretty simple job in most cases, so they could be hired pretty cheaply and abundantly. Just stick a manager above them to keep potential power abuse from occurring, and you have a solid system.