Dear RIOT: Letter From a Permaban

To those who read this. Consider all of the points that I make, and if anything surprises you then please help me to ask RIOT for the truth.

Dear RIOT,

As you know, you have permanently banned my League of Legends account. I will admit that this does disappoint me, because I have enjoyed this game and being a positive member of the LoL society for the past 4 years. However, I am not sorry for any of my past history, my chat, or my "behavior" in game, and here is why:

1. I am not sorry that I received a 21 day temporary ban for "play calling", with the chat showing that I said "Let's go Baron", "We should push mid lane", "There's a teemo shroom in that bush", "I'll engage", and "They're at dragon".

2. I am not sorry that I received a 14 day temporary ban for "verbal abuse", with the chat showing that I said "I'll ward your blue", "gj team we're doing well", and "Thanks for the help".

3. I'm not sorry that I submitted a support ticket asking why I was banned for #1 and #2, and a RIOT employee told me that I had his deepest apologies, and that the automated system is not perfect, but that from what he saw in my profile there was no reason for me to be banned, but that he regrettably could not remove the restriction.

4. I am not sorry that I had submitted another support ticket asking RIOT how the automated support system marks players for punishments, trying to clarify what I should do to not be marked for situations like #1 and #2. The RIOT employee then explained to me how the new automated restriction system works (which permanently replaced and deleted the Tribunal system) by automatically marking a player for a restriction if they receive more reports than average within a set number of games.

5. I am not sorry that based upon that information and admittance of fault that I received from those employees, that RIOT decided to permanently delete those support tickets. While they claimed to me that the reason for this was because RIOT employees are not supposed to give details of how the punishment system works, it also makes it impossible for me to show scans of those support tickets which would accurately document the truth behind the failures of the current system.

6. I am not sorry that I posted threads to this community board bringing up these details, which received both good response as well as verbal abuse and hate speech, but more often than not received players openly surprised that what I was saying was true. However, RIOT deleted those threads as well, due to RIOT employees within those threads either admitting the imperfections of the report system again, or other RIOT employees who were openly verbally abusive and using hate speech against me.

7. I am not sorry that I played a game with a verbally abusive Volibear player who I ignored his trolling, verbal abuse, and hate speech against me. He was playing with 3 premade friends, and he spent the entire game insulting me for being the only one who wasn't willing to troll and throw the game, and who got even more frustrated that I was not responding to him. Due to his frustration, he told me that his brother in law worked for RIOT and was streaming the video of our game on twitch as we speak, and that the Volibear player was telling his brother in law to permanently ban me by the end of the game. He gave me the brother in law's twitch name and his RIOT employee name and said that this was not the first time that he had gotten a player permanently banned, and that he would never be punished due to his brother in law "covering his back". The game ended, and immediately I received the notification that I had been temporarily banned for 21 days due to negativity. I submitted a support ticket on this, and the RIOT employee who responded was the brother in law, and merely said that I deserved the punishment and that my support ticket would not be documented. The support ticket was then deleted, and I submitted another ticket asking RIOT to confirm that the employee who had talked to me was the brother in law, which they denied. I then submitted a community thread here to bring this to the attention of other players, and RIOT deleted that as well.

8. I am not sorry that in-game, I will openly be honest with my team as well as the enemy team if someone is intentionally throwing, and will uplift my team if our teammate is the one trolling, and apologize to the enemy team if one of theirs is. I am also not sorry for openly telling my teammates that I am muting them. Neither of those actions violate the Summoner's Code (contrary to many RIOT employee's claims), and there is nothing verbally abusive or even negative for openly acknowledging someone who is intentionally throwing.

9. I am not sorry that I was permanently banned due to 2 games, which each had 4 premade teammates who were verbally abusive, trolling, and who I muted. Both teams then lied to the enemy team, telling them that I had said hate speech and verbal abuse against them, which caused me to receive 4-9 reports each game, which automatically marked me for punishment, which was a permanent ban.

10. Finally, I am not sorry that this opportunity has caused me to reconsider how important this game means to me. Although I do have a smurf account and might play it briefly, I feel that this game has fallen very far from where it used to be as a community. It should be a clear indication of something being wrong when League of Legends has been voted as the most verbally abusive game in the U.S. for the last 2 years. From what I have seen from personal experience, RIOT has taken the stance of punishing players who point out the verbal abuse and throwing of other players, instead of punishing the players who are the verbally abusive ones. This is why the majority of games (in both ranked and normals) usually end up with at least one teammate who is intentionally trolling, verbally abusive, or just negative in general. I have no hope that RIOT will do anything to change this, because they refuse to admit that their system is flawed.

For those who have read this far, I wish you luck. May you have greater luck than I have. I wish that this thread would not be downvoted into oblivion, but that is what happens when you challenge the system in place and present facts to prove that it is wrong.