From Harm to Habit: The Proliferation of Acquiesced Toxicity in Chinese Gaming Communities

Toxicity is widely recognized as both harmful and pervasive in multiplayer online games. This study focused on main forms of toxicity in MOBA games and explored how these forms are sustained through community dynamics in Chinese gaming communities. This study used League of Legends as a case and employed 19-month online forum observations and semi-structured interviews with 21 players. This study found that players' collective evaluations on the severity of toxicity are shaped by the interplay of platform governance, moral reasoning, and digital affordances. Although players recognize that toxicity is harmful, they tend to develop acquiesced norms toward it under multiple constraints from culturally informed tendencies toward conflict avoidance, collective emotional strain under socioeconomic pressures, and high costs of confrontation in highly interdependent gaming environments. Furthermore, acquiesced norms can be paradoxically reinforced by social support within gaming communities through reframing victimhood and legitimizing retaliatory coping strategies. Based on these findings, this study offers broader implications for community-based platform governance.