League of Legends players started reporting a different process for when a player’s name is determined inappropriate. A player whose “summoner name” violates League’s Terms of Use must now complete a survey, play 50 matches, and then take another survey in order to choose a new name. Otherwise, they’ll simply be assigned one. This is a pretty significant change from the previous process, in which a player was assigned a temporary name until they picked out a new one.
It’s also significant because League matches can take quite some time—up to an hour—and 50 matches is a lot. More importantly, the survey seems to be directly lifted from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), a 40-question test created by Robert Raskin and Howard Terry in 1979. The test is still used to measure narcissism.
Some players are uncomfortable with the nature of these questions, and Riot hasn’t yet come out with a statement about the specific reason for asking them. The assumption is that this is another step in Riot’s efforts to identify and combat the toxicity in the League community.
A big part of the problem is that players don’t know how this information will be used, shared, or stored. Some of these items are not only very personal; they verge into legal and medical territory. While no player is obliged to fill out the survey (or fill it out truthfully), it raises a lot of questions.
Personally, I would be extremely uncomfortable with providing this type of information about myself—even though my answer would be “zero times” in all cases. I hope Riot clarifies what the test is for and how the information will be used, because the ethics of administering this type of test without any informed consent is dubious.
