Earlier this month, players began receiving information about updates to our Terms of Service. These updates ensure we’re evolving with games and the content ecosystem to make the best possible experience for our players and creators. You can read about all of the changes here. At a high level, four of these changes specifically apply to the creator community:
1) “Off-Platform conduct” and behavior connected to our IP is now subject to our Terms of Service. Our intention with this update is to help protect players from harmful behaviors they can experience across the various places that touch their gaming experience. This update applies very specifically and only to content where Riot’s games are the background of the content produced. Though we aren’t going to proactively monitor everything that happens across social media, it is now within our rights to issue penalties in-game when that content is brought to our attention. As an example, if a creator uses hateful slurs about an opposing player or teammate on their stream, but not in game over chat or voice comms, we can still issue a penalty as if that behavior occurred in-game. TL;DR - If you say or do things that break our Terms of Service while broadcasting or creating content about our games, we can restrict access to your Riot accounts (and suspend your Partner privileges if you are part of our Partner Program).
2) Content that promotes breaking our Terms of Service, specifically sponsorships for and content around boosting services and buying/selling accounts, is now subject to penalty. We take competitive integrity seriously, and view these behaviors as a detriment to creating fair, fun play. If a creator is sponsored by a boosting website, promotes ways for players to buy and sell accounts, or otherwise does anything that encourages players to break our rules, we may suspend access to your Riot accounts. This can happen formally, through sponsored posts on social media accounts, videos, or streams, or just in casual conversation that occurs during the course of content. TL;DR - Don’t do anything that encourages or teaches players how to break our rules, whether formally or casually.
3) Stream sniping is explicitly against our rules and players who do so may be penalized. One of the most negative and discussed experiences within our creator community is stream sniping, which also impacts the competitive integrity of our games. While this issue isn’t new, building a policy and penalty system around stream sniping is new for us. We are still in the early testing phases and, as of now, only a limited group of English-speaking VAL creators are taking part in testing out our systems and processes before we roll it out globally and across our games. Unfortunately, if you are not part of that beta test, we’re not quite ready to take reports or action on stream sniping. As soon as we’re ready to go full-speed, we’ll come back and let you know. TL;DR - Riot will soon™ take reports and action on cases of players who stream snipe our creators.
4) We’re starting to restrict access to all of a player’s Riot accounts for particularly serious violations of our Terms of Service. We want our games to be fun and welcoming to everyone, but sometimes bad actors do particularly bad things. When that happens, we want to make sure they don’t just take that bad attitude into another Riot game and create negative experiences elsewhere. So, for the rare occasion a seriously egregious violation occurs, we’re now including Riot-wide bans in our penalty system. TL;DR - problematic behavior in one game may result in penalties across all of our games.
We know that some of these updates may require creators to rethink their existing content strategy and content partners. We are giving creators until Jan 3rd, 2025 to adjust their content to adhere to these rules. Past that date, we can and may begin enforcing these across the entire creator community. We appreciate everyone’s support in building the best gaming experiences possible and look forward to seeing you in-game!
