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.