Boards›Player Behavior

Regarding the Ban Methods used by Riot

Spevacus··3 votes·1,619 views

Riot mainly bans players by account name (so, one specific account cannot be used). They also sometimes use IP bans to ensure that specific person cannot continue to play at all, buuut... IPs can be changed and that ban can be avoided. I've yet to witness Riot utilize a Computer ID ban though, and I'm genuinely interested as to why.

For those who don't know, every computer has its own MAC Address or Computer ID, and it's distinct to your specific computer and no other. So if I had a game and I banned your computer ID, your entire computer couldn't connect to my game. This in conjunction with an account ban and IP ban would totally lock you out unless you purchased a new computer (which is a lot of dedication just to play a game, right?)

So, Riot or another person of knowledge on their moderation systems, could you tell me why computer ID bans aren't used or are unpopular?

(TL;DR: Why can't Riot ban an entire computer based on its ID?)

8 Comments

55311502DEL11 votes

You know how easy it is to hide that ID right?

Spevacus1 votes

Nope, I'm totally unaware. Wanna fill me in?

55311502DEL12 votes

You can reset literally the same way you can reset your IP (Not like using a vpn or proxy, but a complete reset.)

Deep Terror Nami1 votes

Hardware ID's? Well, targeting a specific computer may be significantly less harmful than an IP ban, but there is still harm to be done and it can still be circumvented. Some people share computers or use public pc's to play, and blocking those will hurt everyone that wants to play LoL on it just the same as an IP ban would (albeit on a smaller scale, as mentioned).

Riot would use that information to monitor an account, but not condemn it on that information alone.

Spevacus1 votes

It might be worthwhile to look into that account's connection history and make a note on whether they use different computers or not.

TheSushian1 votes

If anything I learnt in regards to computers dictate, most IDs can be easily changed on the fly, or can be easily modified so someone can get back to what they're doing. That, and the computer IDs themselves that you're talking about are HomeGroup-based IDs more prevalent to Networking. It's something Riot can't see through the client anyway, as they only see the hostname of the computer, and not the Network Group name itself (Basically, you may have named your computer one thing, but in reality riot sees what your computer assigned as hostname, which is one of the easiest things to modify all by doing a quick Control Panel update).

Still, if that did exist, then the problem would've been migitated immeasureably and a long time ago. Kudos for the thought ^^.

Constantiine1 votes

how about just chill the hell out on perma's . simple lets not ban people because they break our sensitive bubbles.

Awkward Couch1 votes

http://m.instructables.com/id/How-to-Spoof-Your-MAC-Address/

Changing a Mac address is pretty easy. We did it in college since we could only have 1 wireless device and 1 wired device online at a time. We would change our Xbox Mac addresses so we could play live.

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