Elo-boosting has become a trend in the League of Legends community world-wide; higher ranking players boosting lower ranked players or selling accounts. In other words: cheating the system. Elo-boosting however is illegal and Riot Games has started taking action against it, starting with the punishment of eight pro players.
An investigation by Riot Games brought to light the fact that that seven League Championship Series North American pro players and a team coach have been engaging in Elo-boosting, which according to the League of Legends terms of use is prohibited.
Definition of Elo-Boosting:
“Elo-boosting” is the repetitive and intentional act of an individual playing on someone else’s account (a “client”) for the purpose of artificially improving the client’s Elo rating. There is no minimum number of games required to be played, nor a minimum amount of Elo gain necessary to qualify as Elo-boosting. An attempt to boost Elo need not be successful in order to qualify as a rule violation.
The following also constitutes Elo-boosting:
- Playing on a less-skilled player’s account while the less-skilled player accompanies you in duo-queue games.
The following does not constitute Elo-boosting:
- Permanently transferring a high-Elo account to a less-skilled player. This is illegal, but it’s in the nature of account-sharing and/or account-selling, not account-boosting.
Riot’s analysis of the effects of Elo-boosting includes that it “damages the interests of players of all skill levels because it cheats the internal matchmaking system of League of Legends”. I cannot agree with them more on this one. This is exactly why we encounter pub games, where you are matched up according to your skill and have an imbalanced game, where you either get completely trashed by players who are way out of your league or play in a team with players who don’t yet have the skill to match the level and cause you to lose anyway.
The following players were punished with 14-day suspensions of their accounts and have had all Season 2 rewards revoked:
- Brandon “Dontmashme” Phan
- Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black
- Samuel “Chuuper” Chu
- William “Meteos” Hartman
- ChengLong “NyJacky” Wang
- Keith “Phranq” Hunter
- Kennen “Rhux” Santos
- Jake “Xmithie” Puchero
The thing that bothers me most is that gamers do this so openly with complete disregard of the developers and the Terms of Use of games. In less than 2 minutes I found numerous sites advertising Elo-boosting, including a South African Facebook group. The most prominent site being lolboost.net (don’t use that service or I will ulti you with Zeus; no jokes!).
If you visit the South African Facebook group, “League of Legends tier and division boosting“ you can clearly make out who the local gamers are providing the service, it makes me truly sad to see some familiar names on there.
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