On July 8, Pu Liu, the Game Director for League of Legends, made an announcement on social media about Riot’s plans to improve the detection and punishment of “soft inting,” a significant issue in the game.

Soft inting involves players making deliberate mistakes during a match without being obvious enough to be penalized for offenses like trolling or helping the enemy team.

Liu explained that with the help of Vanguard, Riot can now issue hardware bans, meaning they can suspend a player’s computer, not just their accounts. He then asked the LoL community for their opinions on how quickly Riot should start applying hardware bans for soft inting. Many players responded, with a majority favoring a more lenient approach.

Spideraxe, a popular League account, suggested a lenient stance, stating that hardware bans should only be used for repeat offenders. He believes that Riot could explore more creative punishments before resorting to hardware bans, such as limiting the players to bot matches.

However, some community members expressed concerns that Riot might end up hardware banning players who are simply having a bad game rather than intentionally sabotaging matches to annoy their teammates.

On the game’s subreddit, players generally supported immediate hardware bans and even called for stricter measures. One Reddit user suggested not only immediate hardware bans but also punishing the main accounts of players who engage in such behavior on their alternate accounts.

As of now, Liu has not publicly responded to any of the community’s feedback, leaving players to wait and see how quickly Riot will move from suspending accounts to implementing hardware bans.

Riot Games has been actively addressing problematic and toxic behavior across its major titles. The company has taken a strong stance against harassment in Valorant and cheating in League of Legends. This new focus on tackling soft inting is part of Riot’s ongoing effort to create a better gaming experience for its players.

This news follows the implementation of Vanguard, an anti-cheat system that has significantly increased the number of bans in higher ranked play.

The development team commented on this step, saying, “Now that Vanguard has had a bit of time to roll out, we’re starting to target more cheats that we weren’t able to action on in the past,” the dev team stated. “

This new wave of actions includes the first-ever Hardware ID bans in League, which will significantly enhance the anti-cheating measures.

Phillip Koskinas, Riot Games’ head of anti-cheat, provided statistics indicating that hardware bans now represent the second-largest category of bans. These hardware ID bans mean that offenders are prevented from playing the game on the same computer, forcing cheaters to replace their hardware if they want to return to the game. This is expected to deter many due to the high cost involved.

According to the data, these hardware bans started around May 15 and primarily targeted cheaters in the higher ranks, especially Masters and above. This crackdown occurred just one month after Vanguard’s introduction to League of Legends, demonstrating Riot’s commitment to tackling cheating.

However, Vanguard has had its share of problems. Originating from Riot’s tactical shooter Valorant, some League players reported that Vanguard was causing significant issues with their PCs. The developers responded by stating they found no confirmed cases of Vanguard causing such problems.

Overall, the introduction of hardware bans marks a significant and interesting development in Riot’s strategy against cheaters in League of Legends. This move is part of their broader, ongoing efforts to ensure fair play in their games.

In the latest update of League of Legends, some champions are getting banned a lot, even if there’s no clear reason why. One of these champions is Draven, a classic ADC.

In the Emerald+ rankings, nearly half of the players are choosing to ban him, according to U.GG. In the higher ranks like Diamond and above, this ban rate goes even higher, reaching 56%. Interestingly, Draven isn’t considered a top-tier pick right now, which led to discussions on Reddit. Players seem to just really dislike him, regardless of his performance in the game.

“i dont even know if he is actually good at the moment. i just hate him.”

“He’s one of those champs where half the reason you ban him is to just keep him out of the game. Still has a super toxic playerbase so it’s a bonus if they dodge, but even if they don’t draven just becomes the main character of a game too easily.”

Many other players in the discussion shared similar feelings. It seems that Draven is one of those ADCs that just irks people, particularly those playing in the bottom lane. Some even call him a “permaban,” meaning he’s a champion that’s always banned if given the chance.

The stats support this sentiment. Despite being banned so often, Draven isn’t actually performing exceptionally well in terms of winning games. He’s ranked 17th among ADCs based on win rates. In Patch 14.8, he’s won just under half of his games in the Emerald+ ranks, according to U.GG. In the previous patch, he did slightly worse, finishing in 19th place with a similar win rate.

For comparison, the second most banned champion right now is Skarner, but his ban rate is only 26.5% across different positions like top, jungle, and support. So Draven really stands out in terms of how often he’s banned.

The catalyst for this suspension was a rather unusual culprit—an internet outage in Busan, the city where he was situated.

Faker got a 2-week ban from Riot Games

In League of Legends, a consistent internet connection is paramount for uninterrupted gameplay. Any drop in connectivity can lead to a player being forcibly disconnected from the game, leaving their champion stranded in the spawn area. This not only disrupts the flow of the match but also has the potential to incur penalties from the auto-ban system if such disconnections become recurrent.

In Faker’s case, the unexpected suspension unfolded during a solo queue session, where he was detected by the system for going AFK due to the above mentioned internet outage in Busan. Despite the circumstance being beyond his control, the auto-ban system issued a 14-day suspension based on reports of him leaving the match.

Swiftly acknowledging their error, Riot Games promptly rectified the situation by lifting the suspension on the world champion. However, Faker, known for his professionalism, took it upon himself to extend an apology letter to the developers, expressing understanding of the unintentional mishap.

“Im sorry, i wont leave the game again”

The incident gained additional visibility as one player in Faker’s match was streaming the gameplay and captured the moment when Faker experienced the disconnect. Subsequently, this player reported the incident, inadvertently triggering the suspension for the Worlds winner.

While the situation revealed a glitch in the system, Riot Games’ prompt response in unbanning Faker underscores their commitment to fairness and the integrity of competitive play. The incident serves as a reminder of the delicate balance between automated systems and the nuanced scenarios that can arise, even for professionals like T1 Faker.

Riot has declared combat against improper behavior in League of Legends. They have taken extraordinary measures to keep toxicity under control and to try to outlaw as many bots and cheats as they can. Riot has also made many system upgrades to implement chat limitations and other anti-toxicity measures.

There is a case when they banned bots for farming Esports Capsules, thus they have done this sort of bot bans in the past. To counteract scripting in this case, Riot has banned over 25,000 accounts.

Over 25,000 League of Legends accounts got banned for using scripting tools

Over 25,000 League of Legends accounts have been banned as a result of scripting, according to Riot K3o on Twitter.

Players were instructed by Riot K3o to report anyone they believed to be using such tools. This aids in removing the bad players surrounding the communities. Riot’s decision to remove such a sizable number of accounts is encouraging. Additionally, he said that they will monitor any compromised accounts in such circumstances.

Recently, Riot has been aggressive in protecting the good players and penalising the toxic and bad ones in its games, particularly League of Legends. Riot has already made the decision to take drastic action to address League toxicity earlier in May 2023.

The recent Riot Korea IP’s toxicity ban of LoL streamers and the Brizz ban already said that Riot is serious about this.

Riot is thus working hard to attempt to stop scripting and other similar practises. We all hope it progresses to the point where Riot can almost completely resolve the problem.

Due to his toxicity, an Italian League of Legends streamer named Brizz94 has been banned from all of Riot Game’s titles. The ban was revealed in a Discord chat where several Italian streamers were present, and Brizz94 quickly read the announcement live on stream.

According to a translator from a Reddit post, the announcement read as below:

“Unfortunately, however, because of a minority of players, who enjoy ruining the experience of other players, talent or Rioter themselves, the negative perception sometimes remains and discourages the new or is reason to move away from the game. This causes harm especially to you, because in addition to not being fun to be targeted, literally drives away hundreds of new players and your possible viewers. We must take decisive action.”

“The community sees YOU as a reference and is influenced by what you do and say. I consider you part of the team and I want to have an increasingly profitable and professional relationship with all of you”

“We therefore decided to discourage these messages, with an action that has no precedent in Italy: ban on sight indefinitely on all accounts for the talent from which these chats arise, namely Brizz.”

Further requesting that other streamers refrain from collaborating with him in the future. Riot officials staff said that “in the confusion that will generate such an announcement, to maintain a professional behavior as I expect from you, to no longer involve the talent in your live,”

Brizz was noticeably angry and sad at the same time as he heard the statement live on his stream because it effectively banned him from working with other streamers in the area as well as from participating in other Riot Games titles.

This publisher-wide ban follows Riot Korea IP’s toxicity ban of LoL streamer TFBlade, which led to the bans of other streamers staying in the same hotel as him.

Riot is on a spree lately with maintaining the pure and punishing the toxic players within their games, especially League of Legends. Earlier in May 2023, Riot was already determined to take dramatic measures to tackle toxicity within League.

The League community has generally welcomed the concept behind these actions that Riot made, and many are eager to see how they act out in the future.

A player may be banned from League of Legends for a variety of reasons, including scripting, inting, running-it-down and toxic behaviour. These sanctions are in place to guarantee that players who log in and play fairly are not harmed by those who do not follow the rules.

Bans can also be temporary or permanent, with some players receiving and a few days off, while others are forever forbidden from playing in that account.

However, thanks to a recently found issue concerning the way a user’s client communicates with Riot’s servers, anyone who understands how to develop this workaround may fool League into thinking they haven’t been banned.

Hackers uncover a League of Legends ban exploit

While scripters aren’t widespread in League of Legends, they do exist. Not to mention a slew of high MMR players that purposefully grief streams and snipe their games in an attempt to destroy them, as well as those who snipe matches in an attempt to influence them for the purposes of solo queue.

The mechanism is critical to maintaining fairness, and the prospect of a ban being overcome is a terrifying prospect for the game.

To begin, players can “forge” a ban by utilising a proxy to fool their client into believing they have been banned from the game. This just displays a popup in your client as if you were banned, but has no effect on your account. Strange, but ultimately insignificant.

Players may avoid an account ban by preventing the letter from ever reaching their client.

This may be accomplished in two ways. One approach is to retain a JWT token from when the account was not blocked alive to avoid the ban.

A JWT token is a digital signature that grants access to a user’s account; keeping a token from an unbanned version of the account will permit that player access.

However, this solution is only effective until a new patch is released, rendering the token required for the workaround inoperable. In other words, it is only useful if the user anticipates being banned and prepares accordingly, and it has a limited life cycle.

Alternatively, you may employ a proxy to ensure that data intended for your client is blocked and never reaches the client. As a consequence, that account will be able to play the game.

League of Legends players were ecstatic when Riot Games introduced the new chat feature with Patch 13.4 because they believed that pleasant conversation and trolling would return to the game. Unfortunately, the new chat feature is also subject to all restrictions, as the community had discovered it.

Riot recently began enacting harsher penalties for AfKs and toxic players, limiting their access to messaging and penalizing them more seriously. Players complained about unfair chat limitations as a consequence.

Players believed that party chat, which was added to the game with Patch 13.4, would at least shield them from conversation limitations and similar penalties. However, it turns out that party chat is just as subject to penalties as team and group chat.

Party Chat can still get you banned

According to a recent post on the official League of Legends subreddit, you might receive a chat restriction if you joke around with your friends or teammates in the group chat and a random player in your game reports you.

Because of the case, players have found the most minimum way to avoid getting chat banned is to not chat at all.  Players are gradually abandoning chat because they believe it is best to avoid using the party chat because you never know what might get you blocked.

One player even pointed out on how bad the chat system is when it comes to any chat autoban features in the game.

“The entire system sucks to be honest, as most chat autoban features always do. The fact that you’d get chat restricted for saying something to a friend in game like “yeah my mom just got diagnosed with cancer, I’m bummed,” is just asinine.

In a game where an optional mature language feature already exists, there’s really no need to censor the players actively in game. You can already do that as well by muting someone. It’s just such a waste.”

In any case, it’s best to refrain from using strong language in your group chat because you never know what might get you banned. Nobody truly knows whether this was meant or not.

Although it is still too early to determine the meta of League of Legends tournaments when entering the Spring 2023 period, the community can already guess somewhat from friendly tournaments. The most notable is the Demacia Cup 2022 when the LPL’s mid-range teams show great determination when the big teams have not had time to warm up.

This tournament still lacks many top League players, but it is clear that the quality of expertise is highly appreciated by experts. Ignoring the performances of each team, it can be seen that the number of champions used is still diverse and there have been quite a lot of changes compared to Worlds 2022.

According to Leaguepedia statistics, there have been 92 different champions selected in just 77 games, especially none of them being considered too strong.

The champion with the highest win rate was Syndra with a striking 67.5% pick and ban rate. Syndra has really made a strong comeback thanks to the arrival of new items or Riot’s “mid-patch” at the end of the season. This is the most preferred mid lane champion of the tournament, followed by the return of Ryze, and Akali.

The two champions behind Syndra are K’Sante and Fiora, who actually dominate the top lane when they can confront many champions. Fiora and K’Sante’s win rates are also extremely impressive (69.6% and 62.5%, respectively).

In the bot lane, Varus, Zeri, and Yuumi are also seeing some love from the players. Meanwhile, the duo Lucian and Nami still retained their position in the meta.

The Jungle is the position with the most changes in the League preseason 2023, but unlike solo queues, professional teams still make fairly safe and easy options at this position. Wukong, Sejuani, Vi, Kindred, Lee Sin… being heavily selected suggests teams want strong open positions.

Facing the above situation, the community hopes that the updates at the beginning of League 2023 season will help open the jungle position, creating conditions for new champions to have the opportunity to return as much as other lanes.

Ryze is one example, whose overall winrate hasn’t risen much beyond 45% in years. Rod of Ages was once his core item in earlier seasons, and with the item returning in Season 13 as a Mythic item, Ryze players were undoubtedly hopeful that the item might rejuvenate him.

Riot Phlox, a Summoner’s Rift designer, took the chance to spam Ryze games with the new Rod of Ages. His account was then banned for 14 days as a result of these games.

Riot dev was banned for 14 days for bad performance.

Riot Phlox is a League of Legends designer in the Summoner’s Rift team, and he lost so many games with a high death count that his account was reported for purposefully feeding.

Riot Phlox played almost 40 Ryze games in one week, and while they weren’t all disasters, he did have his share of bad luck. Phlox’s account was tagged for purposefully feeding in many games with a high death count.

The Riot developer was eventually banned for 14 days for “disruptive game behavior such as trolling, griefing, feeding, or purposefully attempting to lose the game.”

This ban, however, did not endure the full 14 days, and it’s not even close. Phlox was instantly unbanned, which the LoL community is criticizing the developer for. He then proceeded to play Ryze with mixed results.

Fans and players showed mixed reactions to this behavior as some weren’t even surprised of how the devs handled it, while others felt not equally at all.

We all hope that other Riot devs will take note of this matter and rectify it as soon as possible.