Two professional League of Legends players are accused of clearly cheating in an official match of the Polish Ultraliga in LoL. The two are said to have done so badly at “win trading” that everyone noticed – and they won the match too.
Which professionals are we talking about? It’s about a match on January 23rd between Team ESCA Gaming and Iron Wolves. The affected players are two Chinese Legionnaires who play for the Iron Wolves team:
LoL: The new champion Hwei fights with a brush trailer
More videos
The team is leading by a huge margin, suddenly two professionals are playing total crap
What should they have done? The players are accused of intentionally trying to lose the match. Their team was ahead 7-0 and 6,000 gold after 15 minutes when they suddenly started playing very poorly.
As the site 3D Juegos reports, they stopped attacking the opponents. And the jungler even obviously refused to take out an enemy inhibitor (via YouTube).
As you can see in the video of the game, both of them play in a conspicuously suicidal manner, repeatedly allowing themselves to be caught unnecessarily by their opponents and therefore missing important moments.
In LoL, “being caught” refers to the situation when you are traveling solo and the opponents catch you unprepared and eliminate you, usually in the majority. Anyone who is “caught” puts their team at a disadvantage for the next few seconds or minutes because their own team members will then go into team fights with one less player.
Kylin finished the match with 3/9/6 and Odin with 3/8/9 – so the two pros died almost 3 times more often than they got kills.
Despite this, her team won the match despite trailing 24-29 in kills.
Why do they do that? In LoL you can bet money on the outcome of e-sports games. When weaker teams win, they achieve higher win rates.
It is therefore suspected that the two players were involved in a scam.
This is the reaction: The community noticed the unusual behavior and was sharply criticized. A Reddit thread on the topic had nearly 7,000 upvotes and 739 comments.
The reddit thread provided a variety of examples of how badly the two professionals behaved.
Ultraliga then suspended both players for 2 games each before Riot Games could launch an official investigation. It is said that this is the harshest punishment that the league can impose on itself.
One can probably assume that Riot Games will impose another, harsher punishment.
More on the subject:
LoL: Community believes a pro cheated in a live tournament – This sparks a huge discussion