On Dec. 14th, Riot Korea announced that they’ve taken strong countermeasures to combat against intentional griefing (wintrading), in relation to illegal gambling sites making profit off pro players’/streamers’ solo queue matches. This issue arose when pro players in the LCK and in the LPL faced hardship in winning their solo queue matches because of the aforementioned issue.

First, all the accounts on the KR server that were suspected of being used illegally overseas were deactivated on the 8th, and a hotline was established between Riot Korea and the LCK teams on the 9th. This meant that all the LCK teams are now able to directly report all the players suspected of wintrading for illegal gambling websites. Riot Korea also announced that as of Dec. 14th, a real-time solution has been implemented to block all unauthorized 3rd party programs.

Riot Korea stated, “Wintrading and illegal gambling on solo queue matches are unacceptable in any circumstances. We’ll make sure to do all we can to prevent such actions.”

The following is a translation of Riot Korea’s announcement on their official website.

Dear Summoners,

We’ve confirmed that a number of players overseas have been involved with illegal Chinese esports gambling websites to directly influence the win/loss of LCK pros, and that they’ve illegally used Korean accounts in the process. We, at Riot Games, consider this situation to be very severe, and have taken the following countermeasures to prevent such from happening.

*Deactivation of all accounts in suspicion of overseas theft (finished on Dec.8th).

• We inspected about 10,000 accounts that are in the similar MMR as the LCK pros (>D2), narrowed down all the accounts that are in suspicion of being illegally used overseas, and have deactivated them on Dec. 8th.

*Real-time restriction solution of all unauthorized 3rd party programs (implemented on Dec. 14th)

• In order for wintrading players to play ranked matches from overseas, they need to play with high ping. Overseas players access the KR server via VPN, and use unauthorized 3rd party programs to reduce their ping.
• Riot Games have implemented a real-time solution detecting these aforementioned 3rd party programs. In compliance with our terms of service and related policies, all players that have been detected by our real-time solution will have their accounts suspended, and will be locked out. The whole process will take place three minutes after the game starts, and players in the same game as such overseas player will be able to remake the game.

*The establishment of a hotline between Riot Korea and LCK teams (established on Dec. 9th)

• A hotline was created for all LCK teams to report all players that are in suspicion of wintrading. If a team has their players ever come across win-trading players for illegal gambling purposes, they can now directly request Riot Korea to monitor such players. This hotline was created with the sole purpose to prevent wintrading for illegal gambling websites, so behavioral actions, such as verbal abuse, will still need to be reported via the in-game report system for disciplinary action.

Intentional feeding and illegal gambling on ranked matches is unacceptable under any circumstances. We, at Riot Games, will do everything in our power to fully eradicate such actions from taking place.