South Korean servers have been a much sought-after practice environment for LoL pros around the world, but a crackdown on who can play on the servers has led to some pro players from Korea having their accounts permanently banned.
Solo queue betting has become a serious problem for high level players worldwide. For instance, Valorant players have been experiencing the wrath of so-called “crypto throwers”, to the point where some pros have tried creating their own small-scale league to avoid match manipulation in high level games.
But when it comes to solo queue betting and game manipulation, LoL’s Korean servers are a hotbed. The best players in the world are known for practicing there, putting a high price on game outcomes for big names like Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok for people who want to make some cash betting on ranked games.
Faker has gone on-record comparing his solo queue games to “slot machines“, which doesn’t sound like an ideal practice environment. While some of the issues there have to do with player behavior, solo queue betting only adds fuel to the fire.
In an effort to cut down on game manipulation, players who don’t live in South Korea are having their accounts banned en masse. Even for LoL pros who started their careers in the region and were born there.
Some of Korea’s best LoL pros are getting banned
To be clear, this only applies to their South Korea associated accounts that have access to that solo queue environment. It’s not like these players are being banned from competing professionally, but Korean pros who have brought their talents to other regions are getting banned from servers in their home country.
This was shown by Kang ‘TheShy’ Seung-lok, a world champion top laner who was born in South Korea. Though most of his biggest career achievements have been in the LPL, he made a name for himself in Korean solo queue and grew up there.
A recent on-stream moment where he got his account permanently banned showed that even people from South Korea aren’t exempt from the strict new server rules.
It’s as of yet unclear whether or not this was TheShy’s own account or a super account granted to him by Riot, but he’s been unable to play on KR servers since the ban. This was expected for players born and raised in China who had accounts in Korea, but it’s clearly a shock to someone like TheShy.
And, while there was an announcement made that requirements to get into KR solo queue would be heavily locked down, players from Korea likely weren’t expecting their accounts to get permabanned.
China has created a new super server of its own to create a high level practice environment for its LoL pros, but that only lessens the blow of seeing mass account bans. Players like Park ‘Ruler‘ Jae-hyuk coming to compete in China from Korea may have their accounts suffer the same fate, removing some of the best players League of Legends has to offer from this highly competitive environment.
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