In recent days, the event that has caught the attention of the entire League of Legends community is Faker encountering game sabotage while climbing ranks. The “culprit” has been identified as top laner Qingtian, who is currently playing for Top Esports. This incident has sparked intense debate within the international League of Legends community, as well as in the LCK and LPL. Everyone is eager to see how TES, LPL, and most importantly, Riot will handle Qingtian’s case specifically and game sabotage in general, especially after Faker’s strong statements.
Recently, TES and the LPL organizing committee announced penalties for Qingtian. Specifically, TES announced a deduction of one month’s salary for Qingtian. Additionally, the LPL organizing committee has also imposed a penalty. Accordingly, Qingtian must pay a fine of 50,000 CNY (approximately 180 million VND) and will be suspended for 2 matches in the LPL. If the punishment is applied immediately, it will affect the upcoming matches against Weibo Gaming and Invictus Gaming. Furthermore, Qingtian’s Korean ranked account will be locked until December 31, 2022.
Additionally, the LPL announcement stated that Qingtian has exhibited toxic behavior multiple times while playing, even heavily insulting others during ranked matches. Therefore, this incident can be considered the “last straw.”
However, this incident and the LPL announcement once again highlight Faker’s tremendous influence. As the LPL organizing committee itself acknowledges, this is not the first time Qingtian has shown toxic behavior, and he has certainly been reported before if everything aligns with the LPL’s report. Moreover, toxicity and game sabotage have been prevalent in League of Legends for a long time, especially in Korean ranked matches, even professional players in the LPL like Uzi or Doinb have experienced it. But it wasn’t until “Chairman” Faker spoke out that responsible parties took decisive action.
Of course, Faker cannot single-handedly eradicate toxicity in games in general and from a significant portion of players from the LPL in particular. But from this incident, it may be time for Riot to genuinely focus on creating a healthier gaming environment for both casual gamers and professional players around the world.