One of the most prominent developers in League of Legends has now withdrawn: David “Phreak” Turley no longer wants to be active on social media. He received death threats and the atmosphere became extremely hostile. The little good feedback on social media is simply not worth the burden of the death threats. The death threats apparently came after changes to the “ping” system in LoL.
Who is the developer?
Some news in LoL can only make you sad:
LoL The Curse of the sad Mummy
More videos
Autoplay
Developer wants to withdraw from social media for the time being
This is what he says now: In a YouTube video that serves as a preview for patch 13.23, Phreak explains:
I will more or less step away from social media for the foreseeable future. The amount of toxic behavior has increased so much that it’s not worth it for me to sift through the few useful comments among all the death threats. Is just the way.
Why is he in so much trouble? As players on reddit explain, it’s obviously due to changes to the “ping” system in LoL, which Phreak defended.
The “Smart Ping” menu is a circular menu with 8 signals that players are supposed to use instead of typing. Signals such as “withdrawal”, “help me” or “opponent is missing” can be communicated via pings.
The idea is that players can mute the normal chat, where flames often occur, but can still communicate via pings. Riot Games can also revoke chat rights for flamers, but then still let them communicate via pings.
However, opponents of the system want everyone to have to read the chat and consider the chat to be incredibly important for communicating in a team game.
At Riot they are of the opinion that the pings are enough for exactly the agreement. It’s enough to say that you want to make the Baron now – you don’t have to insult the mother of a fellow player.
But as Dotesports explains, the ping system is also used to harass fellow players, which can worsen the gaming experience.
Phreak had defended the system on YouTube: It was there when players were not in voice channels together. Communication is necessary, but typing is often too cumbersome.
He was countered with the following: You have to be able to communicate sensibly in a team-based player. The ping system over-simplifies this. Riot Games should strive to create a safe space for players and not restrict their ability to communicate.
This discussion, which sounds quite reasonable presented like this, apparently got the completely wrong idea from some people, which led to these death threats against the developer.
How is this discussed?? A difficult mood can already be seen on reddit as people discuss Phreak’s decision to retire.
Some say he shouldn’t act like that. Death threats are normal in video games. You get some all the time.
But others say: There is a difference between receiving death threats while you are anonymous and whether you are a “visible person” that everyone knows and then receive such threats.
The LoL community rightly has a bad reputation.
This is what lies behind it: You can have an excellent argument about the ping system and both sides can be understood. But now it’s no longer about the matter at all; the factual discussion has now been replaced by a discussion about how we should treat each other.
Ultimately, players who behave in such a toxic way are just cutting into their own flesh: on the one hand, no one likes to listen to angry, screaming flamers and, on the other hand, no one wants to talk to such people and stay calm while being shouted at and insulted becomes.
Reasonable arguments help things much more than emotions like anger and anger. When it comes to threats, every limit has long been crossed.
The discussion in LoL is very reminiscent of Destiny. The community manager who spoke to the players received death threats and even resigned. Since then, Bungie has largely stopped communicating with players, which they are now outraged about:
Destiny 2: Players have been complaining about community managers for 12 years, now complaining that there is no one left