The folks at Riot Games have brought down the hammer on numerous professional League of Legends players, issuing fines to four players and formal warnings to 12 others for “various levels of negative behavior in KR solo queue.”
The 12 players who received warnings rather than fines “[were] found to have exhibited abusive language towards teammates or opponents in solo queue games.” However, Riot considered as a mitigating factor that “the frequency of reported games was fairly low amongst each of these individuals and the language used, while not what we expect from pro players, was not so egregious as to require a fine or a ban.” The censured players include three players from Team Vitality; two players each from G2 Esports, Invictus Gaming, and Afreeca Freecs; and one player each from Cloud9, Gambit Gaming, and EDward Gaming.
The lowest of the fines were issued to Danil “Diamondprox” Reshetnikov of Gambit Esports and Seunglok “TheShy” Kang of Invictus Gaming, who were each issued a $1,000 US fine for toxic behavior and griefing. Meanwhile, Afreeca Freecs head coach Yeonsung “iloveoov” Choi “was reported in nearly 80 games, which was more than 70% of the solo queue games he played in September,” and although Riot claims that it “saw no evidence of intentional feeding, and his toxicity varied over the reported games, the high rate of reports coupled with a previous disciplinary incident in the [League of Legends Champions Korea] justifies a heightened fine” of $1,500 US. And lastly, a Riot investigation found Jian “Uzi” Zihao guilty not only of toxic behavior but also of using an account not registered to him, which is a clear violation of the game’s TOS, earning him a $2,000 fine.
Toxicity in online games and esports has been taken much more seriously over the last few years; here’s just a smattering of the stories we’ve covered:
