League of Legends has been around for over ten years and is still one of the most popular online games ever. According to the developer Riot, the MOBA was the most popular PC game ever with eight million simultaneous players in 2019. And of course they have an interest in keeping it that way.
The studio, which currently has its hands full with the new Valorant project, has by no means forgotten its flagship. After a really unfair exploit, Riot overbid in China 3300 players at the same time – for three years
What exploit is it about?
Flame rain on the entire map: The character Ornn has an ability in which he actually only moves forward a relatively short distance and uses a burst of fire to damage nearby enemies and also applies status effects to them.
This maneuver was, however, absolutely overpowered by the exploit in question: In this way, Ornn was able to spread the move across the entire map, thereby attacking every enemy at the same time. This affected not only enemy players, but also towers and minions – regardless of where they or Ornn were.
YouTuber Vandirill, who specializes in League of Legends, shows what this looks like and what destructive power the exploit has on his channel:
That's how Riot reacted
Sure, neither player nor developer Riot found that funny. After all, the attack was not so intended and massively damaged fairness in matches. Due to the massive use of the exploit, the team was now forced to take extreme measures and made an example of the users.
The affected players have now been banned from the game for three years, so they can no longer participate in the matches in any form. These were mainly Chinese players, the American and European community are probably not affected by the spells.
Not recommended for imitation: Even if it sounds like exploit users have gotten away with it in this country, it should actually be clear that players should not imitate this behavior. Regardless of how much you damage fairness and thus the game as a whole, Riot has made his point clear. Instead of empty threats, there are years of spells, so you should rather have a grip on this.
Unfair players have also appeared in the new project. Riot Games had to banish the first cheaters shortly after the Valorant beta started.
For LoL and Valorant, the developers use the in-house anticheat program Vanguard, which operates at the kernel level of the operating system and has received a lot of criticism for this. You will find out why the system had to be changed again recently in an extra article.
