The developers of League of Legends, Riot Games, have imposed a penalty on the organization G2 Esports. Their top laner, Martin “Wunder” Hansen, was caught playing World of Warcraft Classic. The LoL team thanks Riot.
What was the penalty? A tracker shows that Riot Games has imposed a penalty of $1000 on G2 Esports. This was on Friday, September 13, 2019 (via LEC Penalty Tracker).
Officially, Riot Games says nothing about it; the only information is that the penalty was due to a “Commercial Violation”.
From this information, one could not conclude what it is actually about. However, from the team’s reaction, it becomes clear: Riot Games must have caught top laner Wunder playing WoW Classic, not privately, but in an official Twitch stream.
Thank you for the penalty!
This is how the team reacts: G2 Esports issued a statement on Twitter.
“Dear Riot Games, we would like to formally thank you for imposing the penalty on us after we demonstrated that Wunder plays WoW Classic. Now we finally have a valid reason to uninstall the game from his PC.
Best regards, G2 Esport.”
When did Wunder supposedly play? This is unclear. According to the website Dotesports, it is suspected that Wunder might have been checking out WoW Classic while an LEC broadcast was running.
This would have happened during an official Riot stream. It is understandable that the LoL developers do not find this very cool.
WoW Classic is like gamer kryptonite
What’s behind it: G2 Esports and 23 other LoL teams are currently preparing for the LoL Worlds. Therefore, the teams want to ensure that all players focus on LoL and give their best there.
LoL is time-consuming at this level, and the teams train many hours a day – playing in “scrimmages” against other top teams. Some professionals from Asia are known to continue playing LoL in their free time, wandering somewhere in the solo queue and causing trouble.
WoW Classic with its high addiction factor is something that one cannot just casually play for a few hours; it represents a real distraction: this is gamer kryptonite.
Wunder already mentioned on his Twitter account that he is heavily playing WoW Classic.
G2 Esports is among the top 3 favorites for the LoL Worlds
What are G2 Esports’ chances at the Worlds? G2 Esports is currently considered the best team in Europe and one of the favorites for the Worlds. A betting agency currently sees the winning chances of the teams as follows (via nicerodds):
- Favorite to win is SK Telecom T1
- In second place is Funplus Phoenix, the strongest team from China – they dominated their league there 13-2
- and G2 Esports from Europe is already in third place
At the important LoL tournament “MSI” in May 2019, G2 Esports surprisingly managed to beat the Koreans from SKT1 in the semifinals and win the tournament against the top team from the USA, Team Liquid.
The Korean player Faker has already said that he is looking forward to taking revenge on G2 Esports at Worlds 2019.
G2 Esports therefore has a good chance of advancing far in the Worlds, and if Wunder stays away from WoW Classic, the chances are even better.
