Riot Games game design director Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer and his family were targeted with death threats during Teamfight Tactics Set Nine PBE testing, according to the lead dev. Mortdog spoke out about the toxic comments on Twitter on June 20.
Hate and threats aimed toward game devs on Twitter unfortunately take place daily. And Mortdog recently experienced an uptick in this kind of toxicity during the PBE testing for TFT Set Nine Runeterra Reforged. A majority of the feedback was positive and constructive, he said, with around five percent pushing the toxic envelope through “death threats,” calls for his job, and threats to his family.
“I get it, I ‘signed up for this’ by being public facing, and I think I generally handle it pretty well,” Mortdog said. “But you can only read someone saying they want to ‘kill your family in front of you and make you watch’ so many times before it affects you. Even if you know its not real.”
Related: TFT Set 9 Cheat Sheet: All champions, traits, updated stats, and abilities
Testing for TFT Set Nine on the PBE servers was difficult for most, if not impossible. Queue times ranged from hours to days as the servers were overloaded with players wanting to test out Runeterra Reforged before it officially launched on June 14. But players forget sometimes that PBE testing is more for the game devs than the individual player, although there are benefits to both parties.
The two weeks leading up to the official launch of a TFT set involve massive amounts of bug fixes and balance changes, which all take place through playtesting done by game fans and devs on the PBE servers. The servers were never designed to hold a full load of players from around the world as the live servers do. And even if they were, threatening a game dev’s life, livelihood, and family won’t change the outcome.
“Treat game devs with kindness,” Mortdog said. “Especially those willing to be honest with you. If you don’t like their game or message, go play something else. There’s so many great games! All your anger will do is cause there to be less of them.”
Players can experience TFT Set Nine now on the live servers. The next Runeterra Reforged update is scheduled for June 28 through Patch 13.13.
