LPL pro player fined a month’s salary after Faker calls out solo queue inting

Yu ‘Qingtian’ Zi-Han, substitute top laner for Top Esports in the LPL, has been fined one month’s salary by the organization after being found intentionally feeding solo queue games on the Korean ranked ladder – and was called out by Faker.

Toxicity is a persistent problem in the League of Legends community. Whether it be abusive language in game chat, or players intentionally losing their team the game in solo queue, the issue of poor attitude in ranked is something that Riot Games have been unable to successfully combat.

And it’s not just an issue at lower ranks, either. Even some of the best players in the world aren’t immune to the effects of toxic teammates, as Lee ‘Faker’ Sanghyeok discovered on March 9th during a ranked game on his Twitch stream.

Sometimes, a report just isn’t enough

The top laner on his team refused to communicate, played intentionally poorly, and kept spamming a surrender vote, despite repeated attempts by his team to come back and win the game. Faker managed to keep his cool for the majority of the game, merely stating that he’d report the player after the game was over. The Aatrox ended the game with a 0-16 kill/death ratio.

However, after the game finished, he realized that the player who had been inting him for the past half an hour was, in fact, another professional player. TES Qingtian, a substitute top laner in the LPL, who was playing on the Korean super server from China.

According to Faker, the issue of Chinese pros intentionally feeding in Korean solo queue games is not a new one, and has been a persistent problem for the server since 2015. He argued that he ‘doesn’t understand’ why Chinese pros are still being given accounts on the Korean super server, and that he would boycott playing ranked altogether if he encountered another player griefing in this way.

Translations of his comments were posted to Reddit, with the post gaining huge traction with over 16k upvotes in under 24 hours.

Responses from Top Esports and Riot Korea staff

Qingtian’s response came only a few hours later, posting an official apology to his Weibo account shortly after the clip went viral. In the apology, he stated that he would “accept all penalties dealt by the team and the league,” and that from now on he would treat every game “with integrity.”

Top Esports were also quick to respond, stating that they would deduct a month’s salary according to the official punishment rules of the LPL.

According to a translation posted to Reddit of an account from T1’s staff, the issue had been passed on to Riot Korea’s offices, and the matter was being discussed. However, Riot Korea’s response only focused on Faker’s statement questioning that all Chinese pros were given accounts on the Korean server.

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According to their statement, it was “difficult to consider this matter solely from the perspective of the Korean region”, as the accounts are offered to professional players of all regions who wish to play in Korean solo queue, not just Chinese pros. However, according to Faker’s on-stream rant, this isn’t the first time that Chinese players have intentionally fed in solo queue games.