League of Legends is one of the largest gaming communities on the planet and Riot doesn’t fail to keep them engaged with updates and new events every now and then. But when all these people from different walks of life, boasting unique skill sets come together and have disagreements during or after games, things tend to become less entertaining and more gruesome and can in fact ruin the match for all the other people playing alongside too.
Disruptive community members aren’t limited to League of Legends but to make sure that gamers have a better experience, Riot has had a banning system based on their Summoner Code and Terms of Use since a long time, which has become increasingly stricter over the years.
Riot doesn’t only hand out permanent or temporary bans, like many other online game developers, but also chat-restrictions and ID bans — the biggest of them all.
If you’ve been hit with a chat or a temporary ban, soon enough your account will be reinstated to normal but permanent and ID ban situations are a bit tricky and here we’re going to talk about all the types of bans, why you got banned and what you can do to get unbanned in League of Legends.
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Types of bans in League of Legends
As mentioned above, bans are primarily classified into four categories in League of Legends: Chat restriction, Temporary ban, Permanent ban and ID ban.
People who are on their first or second offence usually receive a 10 or 25-game chat restriction, respectively. If you’re on your third offence, you’ll receive a temporary ban and a permanent ban on your fourth.
However, depending on the severity of your offence, it is possible that Riot skips the chat restriction altogether and hands you a temporary or a permanent ban.
ID bans are the most serious ones as they aren’t account-related but person-related. So, all of the three bans talked above are struck on your LOL account, but getting an ID ban means that Riot will ensure to the best of their ability that you aren’t able to make another League of Legends account; basically, Riot bans you from playing League of Legends.
ID bans are generally handed out in case of extreme aggression like a verifiable threat against another player or Riot team member. They are also uncommon.
in addition to the four bans explained above, you can also get banned for financial disputes related to RP or unauthorised purchases resulting in a chargeback to Riot, but that isn’t gameplay-related and you can submit a ticket to Riot or contact your bank to resolve the issue.
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Why did you get banned?
Generally, a summoner is banned from League of Legends for disruptive behaviour that goes against the summoner’s code (community guidelines). This can include but is not limited to, abusing your teammates or opponents in-game using the chat feature, intentionally feeding the other team, going AFK (even when you’re active in-game and aren’t facing technical difficulties).
If you’ve made a verifiable threat against another player or a member of the Riot staff, not only your account, but you as a person might potentially get banned from League of Legends.
What if you weren’t playing from your account?
According to Riot, you’re responsible for any activity of your account, however, if you feel that your account might’ve been hacked and you weren’t playing all those matches, you can submit a ticket to their support team about the same and recover your account.
Also read: How much money have I spent on League of Legends (LOL)?
How to get unbanned in LOL?
How you get unbanned largely depends on the type of ban you’re facing; you could just wait it out or submit a ticket to Riot support to get your ban overturned if you feel it was wrongly placed on your account in the first place. Just remember to be polite in any message you send to them to make things smoother and faster. A knee-jerk reaction won’t help.
Riot doesn’t punish account for false reports as reporting is only the first step and the publisher ascertains the allegations before a ban is placed on an account. If someone has been submitting false reports, chances are that their account will lose credibility and future reports from them won’t matter much.
Chat restriction
If you’ve been hit with a restricted chat ban, and it’s your first offence, it’ll be lifted after 10 games. If it’s your second offence, the ban will last for 25 games. If you continue with the disruptive behaviour that landed you in the spot in the first place, chances are you’re looking at temporary or permanent soon.
Temporary ban
If you’ve received a temporary ban, you’ll have to wait for two weeks before you can re-access your account and start playing again. However, be careful to not abuse the summoner code anymore as that could lead to a permanent ban the next time around.
Permanent ban
If you’ve received a permanent ban, chances are that you won’t get it overturned, as according to Riot, receiving a permanent ban either means that you’ve shown disruptive behaviour in the past and have been handed out temporary ban or restrictions or have been excessively abusing the summoner code or terms of use of the game.
While in the first case, Riot argues that you’ve been intimidated of wrong practices earlier but continued down the same path and so the ban can’t be overturned because you knew well enough what you were doing; you can still submit a review request to League of Legends support here if you think the ban was incorrect and should be re-evaluated.
ID ban
If you’ve received an ID ban, it’s very less likely that Riot will overturn their decision and you can forget about getting your banned account back. Even more so if you were found giving verifiable threats to another player or a Rioter. In such extreme cases, Riot tends to cut communication with the banned player overall.
However, you can submit a support request for re-evaluation of your account a year after you were banned (you can find the date in the email Riot sent you regarding the ban). You’ll also find other instructions to recover your account in the email Riot sent you detailing why you’ve been banned.
Also read: How much time have you wasted in LOL?
Does submitting a support ticket help?
Riot support won’t obviously lift any bans that they find have been placed accurately; however, in case you’ve shown improvement in your in-game behaviour and have been following the summoner code since, chances are that they’ll go light on you.
How to ensure you don’t get banned again?
If you’ve been banned and have been able to recover you account, it would be really helpful to your case if you didn’t indulge in the misdemeanors that got you banned in the first place.
If you feel the urge to say something, which is unacceptable according to LOL’s code and terms of use, maybe mute that person’s chat and emotes and even mute the entire chat. Avoiding a conflict is the best way to ensure that you don’t go out of line and aren’t handed any more bans in the future.
If you improve your in-game behaviour and adhere to the Summoner’s Code, it’ll reflect on your account and will help in healing its reputation in the long run.
