IN a continued effort to make games a platform for fun and safety online, leading gaming company Riot Games has introduced new parental controls in the US for its titles to combat toxicity.
Riot Games has been on the front lines in fighting toxicity in games, especially with the gaming world known for its unforgiving trash-talking culture that led to several altercations, both online and offline, even more so in online games such as League of Legends, Valorant, and TFT.
In fact, back in 2022, Riot forged a partnership with another gaming company, Ubisoft, to launch the ‘Zero Harms in Comms’ project, having a database partnership training artificial intelligence (AI) to gather data detecting toxic behavior.
Today, their latest initiative is parental control, allowing the parents of players aged 18 below to have control over what the underage player plays, and who they engage with within the Riot Games’ circle of titles.
Enabling parental control settings allows them to turn text and voice
chat off; limit text and voice chat to friends only; prevent sending or accepting friend requests; view the friends connected to their child’s account; restrict access to specific Riot games; and disable account access entirely.
To enable parental control, the parents must enter Parent Portal by logging in using their child’s account and providing an email address designated under the account management tab. They will then receive an email that will enable them to access Parent Portal.
In their FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), Riot Games reassured parents that their child would be unable to remove or bypass the parental control once enabled. They may only do so once they turn 18.
Currently, this feature is available only on League of Legends, Valorant, and TFT on PC, with TFT on mobile planned to have the same feature by early 2027.
Riot Games plans to bring this feature to more countries.
However, they acknowledge that ‘different countries have different restrictions, guidelines, and requirements of parental control settings.’