In Spring 2022, one of the most prominent issues that shook the global League of Legends community, alongside T1’s records, was the rampant game sabotaging in ranked matches. Notably, the “perpetrators” this time were professional players, and surprisingly, Faker was one of the “victims”. In fact, Faker encountered this situation more than once during this Spring season. Specifically, the mid-laner of T1 faced at least two instances of game sabotaging from LPL players, including Able and Qingtian.
However, recently, what seemed to have calmed down is showing signs of exploding again. On his streaming channel, Doinb – the mid-laner of LNG Esports confirmed that three accounts belonging to him, Iwandy, and LvMao were permanently banned. Among them, the most unfortunate was Iwandy’s account as he was the top 1 in Korean rank, and being a Support makes it very challenging to climb to that spot.
Doinb expressed his frustration about this issue. On the stream, the 2019 World Championship champion stated: “I did absolutely nothing, but my account has been permanently banned. It might be because ‘that person’ spoke up, and now they are handling it too rigidly and strictly.”
According to many speculations about “that person” Doinb hinted at, the only player influential enough to compel Riot to take action against the Korean rank accounts of LNG players could only be Faker. This is because he is the most vocal player against game sabotaging this Spring season. Furthermore, soon, Faker and his T1 teammates, as well as the Korean national team, will need to focus on MSI 2022 and Asiad 2022. Some opinions suggest that limiting game sabotaging from LPL players comprehensively is a way to help Faker and his teammates avoid unnecessary psychological impacts, should any “incident” occur.
Of course, these are merely speculations from Doinb and a segment of LPL fans. There is still no evidence or basis to suggest that the Korean rank accounts of LNG players being banned is connected to Faker. Perhaps everything will only become clearer in the future, or at least when Riot provides feedback on Doinb and his teammates’ cases.