Riot under fire after League streamer Thebausffs controversially banned for feeding
Riot GamesLeague of Legends streamer Simon ‘Thebausffs’ Hofverberg has been banned from the game for intentionally feeding, and some fans aren’t at all happy with Riot.
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While anyone is capable of inadvertently feeding in a League game, intentional feeding is deemed one of the worst things a player can do. Understandably, it’s a bannable offense.
Thebausffs is a Challenger-level streamer known for playing full-AD Sion. His high-risk, high-reward style of play, which leads to him either popping off and carrying games singlehandedly or feeding the opposition.
After his latest games on his main account, however, Thebausffs picked up a ban. He took to Twitter to inform fans, as he bluntly said: “I just got banned for intentionally feeding.”
I just got banned for intentional feeding pic.twitter.com/x1mC1QhBhQ
— Thebausffs (@thebausffs) January 10, 2021
The response from the community has swiftly criticized Riot’s decision. LEC color caster Christy ‘Ender’ Frierson said: “@RiotSupport ya dun goofed.”
Meanwhile, one player said the decision was ‘unjust’ due to opposition players deciding to “ghost” (stream snipe) him.
enemies ghost and you get banned, where is the justice
— Elite500 (@Elite5002) January 10, 2021
In his previous two games, stats from OP.GG show Thebausffs went 4/10/3 and 4/15/0 respectively. Accumulating 15 deaths in one game is pretty bad, and will almost certainly be deemed as feeding by Riot’s moderation team.
Despite this, in the last game, he managed to do the most damage to enemy champions of all players on his team, suggesting he was still attempting to play properly and not sabotaging the game.
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Riot had released a harsher detection system for intentional feeders in patch 10.15, which resulted in too many “false positives” (i.e. incorrect bans) being dished out, meaning it had to be dialed down.
Tyler1However, some players understood Riot’s decision. Former Schalke AD Carry Konstantinos ‘Forgiven’ Tzortziou thought it was about time TheBausffs picked up a ban, as he said: “[after] 10 years and about a hundred thousand 0-15 [scores].”
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Of course, there are instances where Riot will deem it necessary to ban a popular content creator. Tyler1, before his “reformation”, popularized the phrase “run it down mid” when a lane didn’t go his way, which earned him a ban.
Update: Riot has since unbanned Thebausff, admitting it was a mistake made by their automation system. League of Legends Gameplay Design Director Mark Yetter said: “If you didn’t know – our automated atk and int detection systems do 90% of the work, but in some cases they get false positives.
“Our player support team reviews and fixes cases where the algorithm makes a wrong call.”