Brolaf here. Lets get the legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way first: Well be updating the Privacy Policy you agree to when you play League of Legends in the next patch to accommodate some changes to how we plan on handling player data in the game. We take player privacy very seriously at Riot, so I want to explain the change thoroughly so you understand why were making this change, and how it ultimately benefits players.
This is the section that will be added to the policy:
"In the event that you choose to create an Account and play the Game, we also collect certain information regarding your in-Game performance and/or interactions with other users (e.g., wins / losses, recent champions played, average number of kills / deaths etc.). These statistics are associated with your in-Game Summoner name and are publicly accessible by members of the Riot Games community. In addition, we may share your in-Game statistics with third parties in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in this Policy. To be clear, no personal information about you, such as your email address, username, IP address, or other sensitive information, will be shared as a part of this process."
So why the change? In short, Im happy to confirm that for the first time, Riot Games will be providing 3rd party developers in the community a stand-alone API for accessing in-game League of Legends data. This has been one of the most popular community requests weve heard over the years, and were grateful for the patience you all have shown as we figure out the best way to accommodate this.
Why give people this data? Because people make awesome stuff with game data like stats sites, which tons of players know and love. We want to see more cool things like that come out of the community.
Were still in development on this API, and youll be hearing more about it in the coming months (how it will work, who can access it, etc). But in preparation for this, we wanted to get this Privacy Policy change out of the way, which is what I just did .
As a dev experimenting with various sources for league data I would really appreciate some more details, whatever you can give out, regarding these APIs. More specifically, will they include player match histories (what regions?), detailed item and champion ability info (numbers and scaling stuff), have query limits and player anonymity?
We will have lots of information for you to dig through in the coming months. We are not quite ready to talk all those details quite yet, but you'll have all the information you'll need at your fingertips by the time the API is ready for use!
I would hope a "privacy policy" would involve an option to keep your stats private, rather than just avoiding the issue by making you forfeit your concerns in order to play the game.
All of these stats are currently publicly available if you Search a summoner name via the Profile page in the client anyhow. I can see anyone's match history, regardless of whether I am friends with them or not. If a feature were to be developed in the game to allow you to hide that, that's something the API team would see about accommodating for sure though.
This just in! Champ select just became a more toxic enviroment! Have a good match history or don't play.
Riot is this really going to help the game? I cannot see a way in which people have a better experience as a result of this.
Give it to us straight, are you getting money out of this or something? Why would this have struck you as a good idea?
The API will be available for free consumption. It's not about making money. It's about empowering the community with a more open data platform and making it easier to access. Sites like LoLKing and EloBuff have to jump through all sorts of hoops presently to access the data they display, which limits their ability to innovate.
The player behavior team is well aware of toxic matchmaking concerns and can probably speak better to ways they're presently improving the types of things you refer to. These things happen when matchmaking already, and I'm not sure the existence of an API will make them much worse. We'll always have a team dedicated to improving player behavior in-game who will monitor that toxicity, and have given their blessing for such an API.
Personally, I'd rather have a sea of awesome community content with a few bad apples we target and mitigate against, rather than an empty sea of content but with those same bad apples that we target and mitigate against .
I'd bet that's part of the motivation for creating a public API — so they can allow useful sites like LoLKing to keep on doing their thing without having to allow full access to the interface used by the game client. At least, that's how I would go about doing it.
Correct! Having an API will actually help better define what types of data can be displayed, how often, and when. This will precisely enable us to better disrupt some of that toxic behavior you're talking about (on top of all sorts of player behavior initiatives that aim to fight toxicity in ways not at the expense of positive experiences).
I'm a little unclear on the specifics here, would this allow people to find their normal elos, or is it just making currently visible info easier to find?
More information on the API will follow, but the short answer is "no" on the regular elo. I don't want to get into a detailed back-and-forth on what is or isn't in the API - it's still in development :P.
I understand where you are comming from, but I think that your looking at the glass as 1/8th full instead of 7/8ths empty. You are right in that currently there are only a few players who screen you with lolking before a match. Players who flame a make threats because "you only have two games as Zed" or that "Kat is a counter to Morg (on the subject of which, who keeps perpetuating this nonsense that a Kat could ever trade with Morg?)". If you make it a free and convenient app to scan your team and their records you will increase this behavior. I see no possible way that there will be anything but more champ select intimidation after making readily accessible data tools. This will restrict players more than it would increase their options.
Lets make a game out of this. You list a set of stats that could be displayed that you think can't be negatively used in champ select for ranked and I will try state why the opposite is true.
I won't be going into details on the API just yet (truth be told, we don't have all the answers - it's still in development).
It's better to battle the toxic behavior you speak of in other ways. Take for instance iTunes. Rather than trying to make music less downloadable, Apple made it MORE downloadable and out-innovated piracy sites, and ended up substantially decreasing music piracy. Similarly, the player behavior team is hard at work finding the most positive ways imaginable to disrupt toxic player behavior, but not at the expense of all the positive things that would come from easier access to player data like through this API.
I think you bring up good points, but I also trust in the player behavior team.
Important changes to the Privacy Policy
Brolaf here. Lets get the legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way first: Well be updating the Privacy Policy you agree to when you play League of Legends in the next patch to accommodate some changes to how we plan on handling player data in the game. We take player privacy very seriously at Riot, so I want to explain the change thoroughly so you understand why were making this change, and how it ultimately benefits players.
This is the section that will be added to the policy:
"In the event that you choose to create an Account and play the Game, we also collect certain information regarding your in-Game performance and/or interactions with other users (e.g., wins / losses, recent champions played, average number of kills / deaths etc.). These statistics are associated with your in-Game Summoner name and are publicly accessible by members of the Riot Games community. In addition, we may share your in-Game statistics with third parties in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in this Policy. To be clear, no personal information about you, such as your email address, username, IP address, or other sensitive information, will be shared as a part of this process."
So why the change? In short, Im happy to confirm that for the first time, Riot Games will be providing 3rd party developers in the community a stand-alone API for accessing in-game League of Legends data. This has been one of the most popular community requests weve heard over the years, and were grateful for the patience you all have shown as we figure out the best way to accommodate this.
Why give people this data? Because people make awesome stuff with game data like stats sites, which tons of players know and love. We want to see more cool things like that come out of the community.
Were still in development on this API, and youll be hearing more about it in the coming months (how it will work, who can access it, etc). But in preparation for this, we wanted to get this Privacy Policy change out of the way, which is what I just did
Regards,
-Brolaf
Cheers,
-JD
http://twitter.com/JD_2020
Riot is this really going to help the game? I cannot see a way in which people have a better experience as a result of this.
Give it to us straight, are you getting money out of this or something? Why would this have struck you as a good idea?
The player behavior team is well aware of toxic matchmaking concerns and can probably speak better to ways they're presently improving the types of things you refer to. These things happen when matchmaking already, and I'm not sure the existence of an API will make them much worse. We'll always have a team dedicated to improving player behavior in-game who will monitor that toxicity, and have given their blessing for such an API.
Personally, I'd rather have a sea of awesome community content with a few bad apples we target and mitigate against, rather than an empty sea of content but with those same bad apples that we target and mitigate against
-JD
http://twitter.com/JD_2020
-JD
http://twitter.com/JD_2020
Lets make a game out of this. You list a set of stats that could be displayed that you think can't be negatively used in champ select for ranked and I will try state why the opposite is true.
It's better to battle the toxic behavior you speak of in other ways. Take for instance iTunes. Rather than trying to make music less downloadable, Apple made it MORE downloadable and out-innovated piracy sites, and ended up substantially decreasing music piracy. Similarly, the player behavior team is hard at work finding the most positive ways imaginable to disrupt toxic player behavior, but not at the expense of all the positive things that would come from easier access to player data like through this API.
I think you bring up good points, but I also trust in the player behavior team.
Regards,
-JD
http://twitter.com/JD_2020