This and other fascinating League of Legends statistics are summarized in an insightful player-run survey.
League of Legends' reputation for making people lose their cool during a game is well documented, but a surprising 79 percent of the 3,784 respondents to a recent community survey said that harassment continued after the match was over. Getting cussed out, being sent friend requests repeatedly, and, almost exclusively in the case of League's female players, being sexually harassed, were the most common forms of post-match toxicity.
These stats are thanks to redditor Clanaria, who ran a survey throughout January 2020 that polled some of League of Legends' biggest Reddit communities about their lifestyle, playstyle, and general relationship to Riot Games' hugely popular MOBA. With only 3,784 respondents, it's hardly a comprehensive overview of League of Legends' 80 million players (especially because people who use Reddit are, themselves, a demographic), but the survey has plenty of fascinating insights nonetheless.
You can check out the full infographic here, and you should because it's gorgeous. Clanaria breaks the survey down into several key areas like the lifestyle and career of players, their playing habits, and favorite roles. Toxicity is the one category that immediately jumped out at me because of League of Legends' infamous reputation—I'm not at all surprised that 98 percent of players have been flamed while playing (as Clanaria notes, that remaining 2 percent is also the margin of error for these stats). But I was shocked to see so many players had been harassed after a match was over.
32 percent of respondents who identified as female were victim to sexual harassment. As a male player, that's something I've never experienced—the worst I've seen were cheeky comments like "best jungler wins" or complaints over a teammate underperforming.
Clanaria also broke down different actions that were considered toxic, like spamming pings at teammates or intentionally dying. Nearly 2,400 people confessed to spamming their teammates with pings, while 2,084 flamed a teammate or an opponent. Yes, I will shamefully admit I have done both in fits of pure, unbridled rage, but I'm shocked that 514 of the 3,784 respondents told someone to kill themselves.
Because Clanaria asked players about their life outside of the game, like relationship and job status, there's some pretty hilarious observations she was able to make. For example, 87 percent of men who play assassins in the middle lane are likely to be single. Meanwhile, support and bottom laners are the most likely to be playing with a partner, with each being the most popular role among women and non-binary respondents.
Hilariously enough, players who favored assassins (and their cousins, skirmishers) were far and away the most toxic class. Combine that with the fact that assassins are the second-most popular champion type in mid lane, which itself is the most popular lane for respondents who identified as men, and you start to get a pretty clear picture of who League of Legends' worst players are.
There's plenty to learn from this study beyond toxicity. For example, 63 percent of players queue up with friends and 92 percent have purchased microtransactions. Junglers are also the least popular role right now, which is probably due to changes in Season 10 that made jungling a lot less fun. My personal favorite is that 70 percent of respondents said they play League of Legends to relax—not exactly the answer you'd expect after all that information about toxicity.
That still doesn't cover all the stats Clanaria has gathered in this study, so be sure to check out the full infographic here.