Boycott League of Legends on the opening day of Season 8.

As the title suggests, boycott League of Legends on the opening day of Season 8 in your respective regions. This is in response to what I feel is a complete inability from RIOT to appropriately deal with the overwhelming number of toxic, abusive and down right foul people ruining the League of Legends experience.

It's quite simple really. I love the game itself, I think as a game it's great. But the experience of playing LoL is an awful one and that's purely down to the frequency that myself, my teammates and my opposition are taking abuse. I'm not talking passive aggressive comments, I'm talking serious abuse that no-one deserves to take. Things like being told to go die, or get cancer, over and over for 45 minutes in a game is ridiculous and I cannot understand how people think this is acceptable behaviour.

The worse thing is, and speaking from experience, a lot of people play games to escape. I've known friends who've had relatives losing their fights with cancer, thinking they would play a game of league to take their minds off things, only to be told repeatedly to die of cancer because of something trivial. Can you imagine how that affects the person? It doesn't do them any good that's for sure. I've personally had my own fights with mental health issues, do you honestly think being given abuse game after game, hour after hour, is really helping anyone with these sorts of issues? I leave a game of League feeling angry, frustrated and upset. I start to question my own self worth because 45 minutes of being told "you are useless go die" is not going to help anyone's mental state. It's not healthy at all and the message RIOT is sending sounds like it's okay to be abusive, that's part of the game because clearly these people are still allowed to play. This all flows back into real life, people are suppose to be having fun, playing a game, escaping from reality for a bit and in all honesty, most will feel worse for it.

So back to the original title, I suggest people boycott playing the game on the opening day of the season and let RIOT know that they must do more to tackle the levels of abuse in this game. It might be a good start to be more cut throat with banning people. I appreciate games can be frustrating at times and people get a little hot headed, but the frequency this happens in League is beyond anything else I've seen anywhere and it goes beyond frustration, you wouldn't speak to people like this in person so why is it acceptable over a game? Let RIOT know that the experience of playing League is a terrible one and we've had enough.

I believe Season 8 starts 16th January.

Thank you for reading,

Craig