A brand-new League of Legends item that is being added into the game in Season 13 has caused some players to get banned on the LoL PBE Server. What is Riot doing to combat this issue?
League of Legends is pretty bugged as we have learned throughout the 2022 League of Legends World Championship already. Gnar boomerangs flying wherever they please, Orianna ults pulling in champions that are miles away and items not working properly either.
Now it seems that one of the newest items in League of Legends is already causing problems much bigger than a simple game loss on the PBE Server. The new item Heartsteel seems to be the catalyst of these problems.
New LoL Item Causes Players to Get Banned
The new item Heartsteel seems to be at the bottom of this mess of random players getting banned for what seems like no reason at all. One prominent content creator for League of Legends RossBoomsocks was also banned, alongside some of his viewers were banned after playing a PBE match.
After investigating, more and more threads on Reddit popped up regarding this random banning. According to the bans these players had used some form of "third party tool[s] or cheating program[s]". Many of the people this happened to don't even use any third party tools like Porofessor or Blitz, which have been allowed by Riot to this point.
Heartsteel might get you banned but Heimerdinger Support sure as hell won't:
With more and more Reddit threads outlining the issue coming to light, one common denominator was soon found and that was the item Heartsteel which seems to have been in all the games that these random banning have happened.
It could be that some weird interaction with the item triggers some built in anti-cheat finder from Riot and therefore bans players automatically. Riot is aware of this issue and has made a statement, saying they'll look into the problem.
We're currently aware of [the bug] and are working hard on a fix however I cannot provide any estimate for the completion date at this time. To avoid confusing or disappointing players, we try to only announce these dates when we are sure we can meet the arrival schedule.
Until this is fixed players who experience this ban will have to open tickets with Riot to get their LoL PBE accounts unbanned so they can continue to test out the new upcoming skins, as well as the newest League of Legends champion K'Sante.