I recently got a 14 day suspension. I felt the need to come here and explain my frustration. I will be as nice and straight forward as I can so as to avoid any sort of wrath from admins or higher ups, but I will voice my opinion and my opinion will be heard.

I’ve had my account since season 1. I’ve not spent much money on frivolous things so I have no unnatural fear of losing the account over a monetary sum, that is a type of leverage RIOT, as a company, does not have over me. I have, however, earned many gifts from friends and family alike, and my skin collection has grown rather impressive over the 9 years LoL has been up and running as a dominate eSports phenom. I’m an old guy (33yrs) and I absolutely relish what I consider to be my life’s passion getting such limelight. League of Legends on a world stage? Along side games like Counter-Strike and Starcraft? I never thought I’d see a day like our current times, at least in the video game world. I’m so happy and honored to be a part of it albeit behind the curtains.

I’ve raged before, I’ve said some mean things, I’ve said some racist things. I don’t and never will mean any of it. This game is not just competitive… It’s hyper competitive. It’s frustrating from my point of view to carry a game just to lose and get banned for it because I said something. The literal threat of perma-bannishment from a game I’ve been part of for 9 years is now a real possibility. From what I can figure out about the current system, I’ve got 3 months of “clean games” (a rather obscure term) before I drop a tier in penalty. I might even be wrong about that. I might just have this threat hanging over my head for the rest of time. I cannot accept this. Not in a country, in a region and in a life where freedom of speech means so much to me. Even if you say mean and racist things in America you have the freedom to do so. It is 100% an exercise of freedom and free will. Riot denies us this based on the logistics of capitalism and the rights they own to the platform. It doesn’t matter if I’m American or not, it doesn’t matter if I play on NA server exclusively or not. They own your account under the guise of free to play and then sell you stuff that’s not even owned by you. Their legality is air tight, trust me I’ve looked.

I cant be a part of this anymore. I feel repressed, suppressed and violated. I do not agree with the banning system at all, it shouldn’t even exist in such a rudimentary form. Anyone can be a tribunal member, any racist or bigoted person out there, can log in and decide the fate of people and the games they play. A game does not need this type of control and it never will. People can and will always say mean and hurtful things, denying them that freedom on your platform, only hurts us all. There’s a mute button in game and that’s the solution here but for some reason, and I can only see dollar signs, RIOT has decided to implement their own system to ban accounts.

It’s just not right and anyone reading this don’t listen to bots that are sure to show up and try to bring me down by posting their own counter views and logic. They’re pretty much paid to say and do what they say and do. No on in the company is going to agree with me that’s completely true. They’re going to show up and say all the normal things harpies harp about. “its our game we can implement whatever rules we want.” blah blah blah so on and so forth you’ve all heard it before, you all know the drill.

Personally I’m done with this game. I’d rather quit now while my account is still there. At least I can brag about having an OG account.

“But Jim, why don’t you play on it anymore, and rep all that swag? why not sell it to me!? I’ll pay you thousands!!!”

“well, it’s simple eddy, they threatened to ban me unless I changed as a person so now I’m on strike until this archaic system that panders to crybabies is replaced with a new system! One that only bans bots and cheaters. Because when it’s all said and done with I don’t care if someone’s toxic or decides to INT the game because guess what? We’re all people and that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes. The people that instigate such a ban worthy reaction should get the ban hammer too. Need I bring up that mute button again?

Only my two cents. Heading over to DOTA 2 now for my MOBA needs. I’ll be seeing you guys once League of Legends updates its privacy policy.

(Also if RIOT would get off their lazy keisters they could program into the game something that stars out bad words for everyone, thus rendering banning for mean and hateful words irrelevant… Oh right they have that in the game already… What? You can disable it? Weird… Oh? There’s a mute button too? How counter intuitive of you RIOT it’s almost like you want to ban people so you can make more money. You’re game is on it’s last leg when you start to ban your customer base. Do you know how many people would come back to LoL if you wiped the ban list? Wow, it’s almost like you’d make a TON of money! But don’t do that because, you know, I told you to do it.)