[Long post alert]

We know they exist. Furthermore, bots that click the play button, click the accept button, hit the Random champion button, and then proceed to walk down lane are incredibly simple to create. So here, we're going to go through and break down botting and discuss what I consider is a good soulution, and why. (WARNING: Economics involved)

#Botting's purpose

First, it is important to consider why bots exist in the first place. Let's consider that botting is a service. What is the driving force behind any service created?

#$

Services exist to make money. Botting is a way to bring in money, ultimately. In addition, in order for anything on this planet to bring in a consistent flow of money, what must exist?

Demand.

Without a demand, there is no way to make money. And without a way to make money, there is no incentive to create a service such as botting for the sake of making money. However, there is still one aspect missing from our small little economic triangle that is the fundamental cause of IP farming bots.

Supply.

This is where botting steps in. There is a demand for level 30 accounts. This demand is met by one of two mediums; you either play the game until 30 from scratch, or pay a few dollars for an account that has been machined there by a script. Time-wise, and money-wise, paying for an account is incredibly attractive. This stated, the demand for level 30 accounts must therefore be high enough that people are willing to purchase them off of sites like eBay.

#A few examples

Let's just look at a few examples of listings for level 30 accounts online. (note: I am not endorsing purchasing said accounts; a single eBay search yields dozens of results similar to these.)

• Link - Level 30, unranked.
• Link - Level 30, unranked, 30,000-40,000 IP, unverified email.
• Link - Level 30, unkranked, 30,000 IP.

Why is there a demand?

There are several possibilities as to why somebody would pursue purchasing a level 30 unranked account.

• Smurfing - People may want to smurf in ranked or normals. While I don't necessarily condone this behaviour in ranked, there is a demand for it, and people do it either way. Taking ranked out of the question, though, smurfing at a low level makes for a miserable new player experience. While we may not punish smurfing, minimizing smurfing is ideal, especially pre-level 30 when people are still just learning the game.

• Playing ranked with friends - There are times when I want to play some ranked games with one of my closest friends who wants to get into ranked but is TERRIBLE at league, and I'm scared to do that on my main account. Or, sometimes I want to duo queue with my Bronze friends, and now that I've reached Gold, that's an impossibility on this account.

• Joining a new server - I have several friends in Europe who play League. I don't want to pay to switch my account over to the other server and lose all of my North America friends on my list just to play with them. What do I do? I make an account and grind it up to 30 until we can play together.

All of these boil down to smurfing, whether intentionally or unintentionally (like transferring servers). Minimizing botting, therefore, will also minimize smurfing and can therefore be a stepping stone into helping the new player experience.

#Competition and monopolies

For all intents and purposes, we must consider level 30 accounts as an open market, and therefore we must consider those botting to level 30 Riot Games' competition within said market. Because creating a mouse-bot to click into a game is simple, we can therefore eliminate the possibility of inherently destroying the bot-creating process, which means that the existence of bots is always possible. Therefore, because this is an open market, that means that there is unlimited entry and exit into and out of this market. The truth here is, botting can never truly be eradicated, BUT, botting CAN be alleviated greatly.

In a monopoly, there is no entry and exit in a market. One (or few) rules them all, and it's very difficult for another supplier to gain access to that market. A prime example of this is cell service; in America, we have four main providers - Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Others exist, but to a much lesser degree. Likewise, Riot has the ability to add pressure that makes farming difficult, just like these four cell providers make difficult entry into the cell service market.

#Limitation of botting

If we want to discuss the solution to a problem, we need to isolate the limitations of the problem so we know exactly what to target.

• 30,000 IP - When reaching level 30 through botting, because of the number of losses that occur, bots rarely exceed 30,000-35,000 IP when they reach level 30. Of course, they can be farmed higher, but at the expense of the person doing the farming. It's not worth their time to farm more IP when they could instead create another new bot to sell to somebody else.

• No in-game content - Rarely do bots have champions available, or skins, or any other in game content; that requires human interaction, and nobody would buy an account that advertises, "Owns Veigar and Mordekaiser and one extra rune page, random runes, comes with 2,000 IP."

#Solution

Riot needs to add something comparable or better to add pressure to botting. As of now, there is a market for level 30 accounts, and Riot is not in that market. This isn't a new solution, but does add a bit of depth as to why the solution is good.

I feel that having an option to buy a level 30 account for RP would be a good way to add pressure to the market and alleviate the incentive for new bots to be created.

First, these Riot-generated accounts would need to include the following in order to put a significant amount of pressure on those botting. (These ideas are subject to all sorts of change and aren't hard, fast rules.)

• At least 30,000 IP, if not more - People simply don't want to start League with a bare-bones account, even if they are given the option to purchase a level 30 account. If no IP was given to me when I purchased the account, buying a premade account on eBay still seems like an attractive option.

• Name change - I'm not sure how the process works, but I assume a name change isn't included if you buy a botted account. This lets us personalize our new unranked account, and through Riot, this is easy.

• Server choice - This may be more difficult, but allowing a server to place the new account on would definitely help with botting, since now we don't have to start fresh on a different server.

• ** (Off the wall idea) 520 RP** - Just enough for a low-tier skin, which makes it more fun. This would also put Riot a step ahead, since no botter will add RP to the account. This is entirely optional and probably full of problems, but it crossed my mind, so I added it anyway.

Of course, there are limitations to selling these accounts through Riot.

• **Must be level 30 in order to purchase a level 30. ** Reasoning here is simple. Bots won't buy accounts, because players can. Furthermore, having a level 12 gain access to a level 30 is... well... not good.

• **Must have been level 30 for at least X months. ** This is debatable as well and may cause more problems than it would fix, but it crossed my mind as an idea, so I figured I'd stick it up here for discussion.

As for price, I have no earthly idea, but I'd definitely stick it somewhere around $20. That's out of my area, though, so I can't really be the judge.

Discuss! :D