League of Legends: Riot cracks down on Elo-boosting

Riot Games has handed out eight temporary suspensions and withdrawn all season two rewards form players found guilty of Elo-boosting - logging into other players' accounts to help increase their ranking.

"An investigation has determined that seven LCS North American pro players (plus one team coach) have been engaged in Elo-boosting. These violations occurred as early as the middle of Season Two and some have continued until recently," Riot said.

"The League of Legends Terms of Use prohibits players from sharing, transferring, selling or trading user accounts and/or login credentials."

The most severe cases Riot uncovered during its investigation involved hundreds of games played on behalf of less-skilled account holders, with up to 900 Elo points illicitly harvested.

Riot said Elo-boosting "damages the interests of players of all skill levels because it cheats the internal matchmaking system of League of Legends".

"Boosting leads to less-skilled players confronting a far superior opponent (the booster) during the boost and also leads to less-skilled clients being placed onto higher-skilled teams after the boost has been completed.

"There is no way to know whether an Elo-booster performed a boost for money or other consideration, but all boosts are viewed as wrong," Riot added.

The eight guilty parties are named and shamed in a ruling on the MOBA's forums.

League of Legends is one of the most lucrative eSports scenes, and has to be extremely strict about all kinds of infractions; it fronts multi-million dollar prize pools, after all. For clarity's sake, the definition of Elo-boosting follows:

'Elo-boosting' is the repetitive and intentional act of an individual playing on someone else’s account (a 'client') for the purpose of artificially improving the client’s Elo rating. There is no minimum number of games required to be played, nor a minimum amount of Elo gain necessary to qualify as Elo-boosting. An attempt to boost Elo need not be successful in order to qualify as a rule violation."

The following also constitutes Elo-boosting: Playing on a less-skilled player’s account while the less-skilled player accompanies you in duo-queue games.

The following does not constitute Elo-boosting: Permanently transferring a high-Elo account to a less-skilled player. This is illegal, but it’s in the nature of account-sharing and/or account-selling, not account-boosting.

Thanks, Player Attack.