Riot Promises to Combat Botting in League of Legends

Botting is and always has been an issue in League of Legends, especially for players just starting out and playing against the AI. With a promise of improving the underlying system in LoL, anti-cheat will also be getting some upgrades to weed out those using level bots to created accounts to sell.

Blitzcrank no skin
League of Legends: We're not talking about this bot... | © Riot Games

Bots in League of Legends are a huge issue for players, even prompting many to quit the game altogether. That's why Riot's anti-cheat Manager Matt Paoletti has gone on Twitter to double down on the whole team's promise to do even more to fight these in-game bots that ruin a players experience.

Botting has become more and more of an issue in League of Legends, with accounts being sold constantly and for extremely cheap prices due to the ease with which people can level accounts. Now developers are reaffirming that they will continue to work on battling these bots.

League of Legends: Levelling Bots An Issue in Multiple Game Modes

To be able to access certain features in League of Legends, players have to reach certain milestones. To unlock the Summoner Spell 'Smite' players have to have levelled their account to 10. Before then, you won't be able to utilize Smite in a game since it isn't available to you.

Of course, if you want to play ranked games you'll need to have enough games under your belt that you're level 30. Now, many players who just want to smurf on lower elo players because they can't get a win in their actual elo buy level 30 accounts for dirt-cheap and jump into ranked.

These occurrences ruin the game and create more toxicity than necessary, with the higher elo players often flaming and asking why their teammates aren't playing how they're supposed to. All this starts with the massive influx of bots in games, levelling these accounts that will be sold to players later on.

Riot used to have a third map and another competitive game mode Twisted Treeline, which was removed in Season 9, due to the lack of players and influx of bots which ruined the game and basically was one of the main reasons why the mode had been removed.

Even though Riot has stated that they're actively working on removing these bots from the game, there are still many in games, especially in games against the AI.

Okay, but what did TheShy do to get banned? Not use levelling bots hopefully...

Matt Paoletti explained that while he doesn't usually tweet about anti-cheat, since that way the bad actors, those that utilize the levelling bots, don't have time to prepare, but he wanted to reassure the community that they are gaining more resources to address this issue.

I don't usually tweet about Anti-Cheat plans (easier to be effective when bad actors can't prepare), but I understand the impact botting has had on some players in LoL. It's a time of large transition for our team currently, but we'll get the resources to help address the issue. While we've had numerous ban waves on many of these bots over the past 6 months, it's obviously a constant battle. We are committed to fighting it.

So, Riot is making sure to work on their communication and what the teams are working on, something they promised after their awful LoL Season 13 start, and giving fans hope that issues which plague the health of the game are being looked into.

Sabrina Ahn

Sabrina Ahn is the League of Legends and Riftfeed Lead. During her time at Concordia University in 2014 she fell in love with LoL and is playing it since – how she hasn't lost her sanity is still unclear....