Two League of Legends "Pros" Banned for Being Horrible

[MikeWehner]

Two League of Legends "Pros" Banned for Being Horrible

Childish behavior is met with a timely ban for two LoL players.

Following in the footsteps of Christian Rivera, aka "IWillDominate," who was banned from competition last month [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120943-League-of-Legends-Bans-Pro-For-Bad-Behavior] due to harassing behavior, two additional League of Legends competitors have been blacklisted from the game for the next year. Both Damien "Linak" Lorthios and Ilyas "enVision" Hartsema will spend the next twelve months watching League of Legends tournaments rather than showcasing their own skills.

The rulings were revealed on the official LoL forums, along with with details of why the suspensions were put in place. According to the posting, both Harsema and Lorthios engaged in verbal abuse during competitive play, tallying more conduct reports than should be humanly possible. Hartsema was reported in 29% of his total matches, which is six times as much as the average European LoL player. Lorthios, while not quite as deplorable, was still reprimanded for 20% of his matches.

One of Hartsema's accounts managed to rack up 436 conduct reports in just 135 matches, and his current harassment score puts him in the top 0.06% of all EU players. Keep in mind, this is a guy who makes money from playing the game.

The banning of Hartsema and Lorthios is good news for the eSports community, but it does put their respective teams in a tough spot. The League of Legends Championship Series season three qualifying round is set to kick off in just a few days, so some fast and furious replacements are likely in order.

Source: Massively [http://eune.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=5032725#post5032725]

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[Atmos Duality]

*insert comment about egos here*
*make half-assed analogy to top pro-sports players here*
*blase statement about sportsmanship and mature behavior here*

Being a "pro" player does not remove the ability to act like a total asshole.

 

[scw55]

Besides, they probably would have won 16% more games.
(This is a Tip that pops up on pre-game loading screens. The actual % was guessed as I have a bad memory. I thought it'd be a funny joke).

It's nice that my reporting of players will be taken seriously.
I also feel like since those two are 'Pro' players than players were probably more eager to report them for douche baggery.

It also grounds the 'Pro' players. Makes them look like humans with flaws (social skills for these two) as opposed to Ubergods of Online Gaming.

I don't think their teams will be missing out. If those two were very abusive, the atmosphere in team must have been not pleasant.

 

[Therumancer]

I have mixed opinions.

On one hand this is good, on the other hand this is done entirely by an automated system apparently. The justification for these guys getting banned is based on the percentage of complaints/reports filed rather than specific incidents and things they did.

The problem with automated systems is that they are easily abused, we've already had plenty of horror stories about people being locked out of their accounts due to automated systems, after having done very little. I myself had a problem (albiet one that never went that far) when I noticed my Gamer Rep on XBL dropping playing online fighting games because half the time I'd beat someone they would report me for unsportsmanlike conduct or something else, a routine behavior with a lot of that community. I wound up stopping playing fighting games over XBL as a result.

See, in a case like this when it comes to dominant players you have to ask, how many people were complaining because they actually did something, or because they just didn't like the player or losing to them.

To me, I'd rather hear that someone working for the company descended with the mighty banhammer after personally catching them saying "X, X, and Y" to other players, than hearing "oh well, the guy had complaints in 29% of his matches" which from my own experience could just be people throwing tantrums similar to what I've run into (and I'm not even good at fighting games, god forbid what it's like for some of the pros in MOBA games and such).

The way this sounds, unless they present some actual proof, I'd actually be considering a lawsuit if it was costing me money via tournament participation, and accuse the company of trying to load the tourney.

In a more general sense, when I briefly returned to WoW to try "Pandas" (which was meh) I had to go through an act of congress to re-activate my account due to Blizzard's automated system having shut it down for cheating... when it was an inactive account (and was intact as far as I could tell when I actually got in). I've also been threatened by automated systems detecting improper behavior with other online games I wasn't even playing or didn't even have installed (and even re-installed them to check it out and found nada).

In short, I put absolutly no faith in any kind of automated "recognition" software, and even less faith in any kind of impersonal system by which one player can "report" another for any reason and have it go into some kind of meaningful record without human involvement. IMO these companies need to actually hire some bloody people, and stop trying to cut corners by automating everything. Especially Blizzard... really, there is no excuse for some of the crap I've gotten from them (always bureaucratic stuff, not user complaints). "Your account has been locked out due to improper behavior" Rly? My account that hasn't been on for 2 years was trying to sell gold? The one that has all of it's gold and items intact? I've been detected trying to sell my Diablo 3 account, the one with my mighty Level 17 Wizard (since I wound up not caring much for the game)... I'm sure people were lining up by the thousands for that one.

 

[FloodOne]

Who cares about their teams? In traditional sports, when a player has committed conduct detrimental, they are usually hit with fines and/or suspensions.

So congrats, e-Sportsmen and e-Sportswomen, you're on the fast track to being professionals, and all the pros and cons that come with it.

 

[Vegosiux]

-snip-

Oh look, someone talking about things they haven't the faintest clue about.

Since I'm already the third person telling you that the LoL tribunal is simply not an "automated system" I'll leave it here, but all your post is irrelevant to the thread because you're obviously not talking about LoL here.

Oh wait, aren't you that guy who talked about how a "serious gamer" is someone with "above average intelligence, often significantly so" that one time?

...ye gods, I can't believe I fell for this.

 

[Missing SHODAN]

On one hand this is good, on the other hand this is done entirely by an automated system apparently. The justification for these guys getting banned is based on the percentage of complaints/reports filed rather than specific incidents and things they did.

It isn't automated at all - those reports were all reviewed by the community through the Tribunal, which is a community driven paid jurist system, basically. The community reviewers get the full chatlog from the game, the reasons players reported the defendant/asshole/whatever, and their stats in the game (ie their K/A/D, item build, etc), and decide whether or not the defendant/asshole crossed the line with their behavior. These reports are shown to some number of players to get a consensus and then the guilty/pardon results are reported back to Riot.

 

[kyogen]

Sooooo slow news day huh?

I mean "Woohoo, two jerks got banned. Yay." and all that jazz but still, this isn't exactly breaking news now is it?

Actually, I appreciate the occasional heads-up that MMO communities are trying to manage the worst behavior within their own ranks.

 

[Gladion]

Damn. The title made me hope that those players suddenly sucked at LoL and were banned because of this. But this is funny, too.

 

[PunkRex]

*insert comment about egos here*
*make half-assed analogy to top pro-sports players here*
*blase statement about sportsmanship and mature behavior here*

Being a "pro" player does not remove the ability to act like a total asshole.

And they should be treated as such. I know you already put the *pro-sports* analogy thingy but I see it more as a professional thing, its his job afterall. If you harass co-workers/customers you get in trouble, simple as.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

You get reported in LoL for saying "gg" at the end of the match if you dominated the game.
Anyone who thinks that the amount of reports in LoL shows anything is delusional.

 

[KEM10]

Besides, they probably would have won 16% more games.
(This is a Tip that pops up on pre-game loading screens. The actual % was guessed as I have a bad memory. I thought it'd be a funny joke).

I thought it was funny. Even though I think that number is skewed because how much of those are games going poorly and then the players berate each other? The cause and the effect aren't so clear cut.

It's quite amazing how it took way over 500 reports for a player to get banned.

You might not agree with me, but I think that it should take A LOT less than that for a player to be banned. And top 0.06? While that's not really as much as it seems considering how many people play league, I bet they put off banning these players for so long because they didn't want to harm their competitive scene...

.06% (or .0006) is an extremely small group of the population. In all of LoL it estimates down to the most reported 600.
This game has over a million people playing and this person is in the top 600 for being reported. That is significant.