Riot donates 2014 LCS fines to The Trevor Project

At the start of the 2014 LCS series, Riot Games said it would donate all fines collected over the course of the season to a worthwhile charity. Today it announced that those fines totaled $31,850, all of which has been donated to The Trevor Project, a charity that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth.

And while the fines are the result of bad behavior among League of Legend players, Riot emphasized that the majority of the LoL community is firmly against abuse: Games in which players used homophobic slurs and exhortations to suicide were reported a significantly higher rate than those that included simple F-bombs.

"As a community, you find these words hurtful and unacceptable and so do we," Riot wrote. "We know that harassment and its consequences goes beyond just words in a game—and that’s why the work of organizations like The Trevor Project is so important. We hope that this money will be able to boost their work creating a safe and inclusive environment for all of us, regardless of sexual orientation."

Riot has rolled out a number of measures to combat "extreme toxicity" in League of Legends over the past year, most recently an automated system of punishment for players who engage in abusive in-game behavior.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.