Faker has had enough of trolls and griefers ruining his solo queue experience. Will he quit playing until Riot steps in to fix these issues?
Griefers, AFKers and quitters are prominent in solo queue. They make games unbearable and long and are the reason many players have quit League of Legends a long time ago. But it would shock you that players in high elos live with the same struggle us Gold plebs deal with on a daily basis.
During a recent stream the most famous League of Legends player in the world, the untiltable king, Faker lost his cool when he got paired up with such a player. The worst part? He got paired with the same top laner the next game again!
What Are Griefers?
Griefers is a term which refers to players who will intentionally ruin the experience for other players around them. For instance, someone in League of Legends will constantly run it down mid instead of trying to actually farm, creating a bad game environment for everyone on their team — and let's be honest it isn’t any fun playing against either.
Why Is Faker Affected By Griefers & Trolls?
Faker is the most prominent League of Legends players in the world. He has won more trophies than anyone else, putting a huge target on his back. He has been suffering from griefers and trolls for years now, and it got to the point where he was the lowest ranked LCK pro at the end of the 2020 season with the least amount of games.
The issue surrounding griefers and trolls in solo queue has persisted for years. Other players have also complained about specific accounts running it down and ruining games, but Faker is the player most affected by the issues — in 2021 during the World Championship in Iceland he even explained that he preferred European solo queue, since his games weren’t riddled with griefers and trolls.
In 2020, Olleh — the support of Golden Guardians — shared a tweet explaining that there are multiple illegal betting sites which bet on high profile solo queue games. Whether this is the case with actual pro players though in this scenario is unsure.
It could just be that these pro players blow a fuse the moment doesn’t go their way and decide to quit. Since many of the griefers Faker has encountered are also pro players, they probably feel like there won’t be any repercussions.
Will Faker Stop Playing Solo Queue?
During the stream on Mach 9, 2022, Faker was extremely irritated by the top laner of his team. It turned out to be a substitute top laner for Top Esoprts — TES Qingtian. In the next game, Faker ended up on the same team with him again.
Instead of dodging and being forced to take a penalty, Faker played in the jungle, babysitting the top laner who managed to play perfectly fine in the second game. That only made Faker even more upset about the whole situation. You can watch the clip here, with a translation:
#Faker :'The troll that I reported last game now is playing like a normal person.Is it really the same person? So if something didn't go his way, he threw the game up until this point? And the victim of that was me? It's so unfair, I really tried hard to win the game' https://t.co/6h6gqPJTJA
— Dea || (@__star9xx6) March 10, 2022
TES Qingtian Suspended (Update, March 11)
Top Esports and Riot acted quickly in this situation and the top laner has been fined 50,000 Yuan (which is roughly 7,909 USD). Not only that, but according to LPL officials he will also be suspended for two games and his Riot account on the Korean server is also suspended until the end of the year.
Will this mean that other pro players will have to watch how they behave themselves on the server, now that Faker has spoken out and has the backing of T1 in this situation?
Is Riot Taking Action?
Faker has been calling out players for years and made comments on the state of solo queue. It is not a good place to practice for pro players anymore due to the amount of trolls. A staff member of T1 has spoken to a Korean media outlet after the players complaints on stream.
We are aware of what happened in Lee Sang-hyeok's solo rank at dawn. He has communicated his intentions to the LCK secretariat, and I understand that the secretariat is currently discussing it.
It seems like the issue will have to be taken care by Riot Global, though, since many of the players in question are Chinese. In the same article, an LCK official explained, “[...] we have taken the form of lending accounts only to players who have signed the pledge. It is difficult to approach only from the Korean office level, as all players from other overseas regions as well as China are involved. However, the most important thing to us is the LCK pro gamers”.
Maybe we will see a type of Champions Queue in the future for the Korean server as well, which could help pro players practice in a healthy environment that isn’t just in scrims. Riot has not confirmed this yet, though, but some fans on Reddit are hoping a solution like this could come into play soon.