Riot Games is making a huge change to its terms of service that can punish creators for behavior that violates its codes of conduct when they’re not actively in-game, with updates set to go into effect on January 3, 2025.
In a blog post published Friday (thanks, Eurogamer), the League of Legends developer announced that many of these updates target content off-platform when it’s tied back to Riot games. So if a creator engages in less-than-appropriate conduct in spaces where a player’s or fan’s experience can still be negatively impacted, they can face penalties in-game. Riot clarifies that it’s not going to monitor social media, but it can take action if something comes to its attention.
What can fall under this purview depends on the creator’s jurisdiction, but the change pertain to a creator who might violate a law, harass an employee, engage in abusive, racist, or misogynistic behavior, spam chat, cheat, or engage in countless other behaviors listed in Riot’s code of conduct.
“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),” the post says.
Riot has also issued guidance on promotional content that can potentially violate its terms of service. So if a creator is selling accounts or teaching people how to cheat, they can be punished within Riot systems, even if they’re sponsored by a separate entity. There are also new policies involving stream sniping where another player watches the stream of an enemy player, and what Riot can restrict in the case of a penalty.
“For the rare occasion a seriously egregious violation occurs, we’re now including Riot-wide bans in our penalty system,” it wrote.
Riot games like League of Legends and Valorant have been plagued with toxic communities for years, which isn’t uncommon for popular competitive online games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Development teams have made some changes this year to help counteract those behaviors. The Valorant team issued a new esports code of conduct earlier this year, for example. The free-to-play shooter’s studio head Anna Donlon also announced new penalties for offending players and increased moderation support.
“Competitive games need to have room for banter. We believe this, and I do understand the fear that we will sanitize gaming by over-addressing these issues,” she said in a video. “But we do believe that a person should not be in a position to have to grow a thicker skin, or whatever… If you need to make truly evil statements under the guise of regular sh*t talk to enjoy gaming, then please play something else.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.