In the League of Legends, there has been a really nasty exploit in recent days with heroes like Poppy or Kayn. Due to a bug in the system, even innocent players were banned because they had such poor stats that automatic bans were triggered. The exploit lasted for a week. Now Riot is finally addressing the issue and commenting on the problem and the victims.
This is the exploit: We reported on the exploit in LoL on June 20. If players used the ability Hexflash at a very specific time when the gates opened in the match, sinister players could exploit this. It could thus be deliberately triggered and exploited.
With the exploit, heroes like Poppy or Kayn were able to use certain abilities globally, meaning across the entire map.
In extreme cases, it looked like Poppy was just standing in the fountain and using the ability Q every few seconds to kill an enemy somewhere on the map by smashing them with her hammer.
There were then screenshots circulating from Poppy games, where the yordle casually achieved 300 or even 500 kills without ever dying. No wonder, she didn’t even leave the base.
LoL thought victims were trolls deliberately playing poorly
So why were people banned? Players on the opposing team often had stats like 0/35/0. They died 35 times but didn’t kill anyone or assist in a kill.
Such stats are usually only seen in players who deliberately sabotage a match by playing particularly poorly. Automatic bans are then issued.
Because when players “tilt”, getting so angry at their teammates that they completely lose control, it sometimes happens that they “intentionally feed” – this is known as “inting” and is so annoying in LoL that Riot imposes automatic bans.
As some players report, they received such bans as victims of the Poppy exploit, which they felt was extremely unfair: because they did nothing wrong, they were just completely powerless against an exploiter.
LoL resolves issue, unbans innocent victims upon request
This was the problem: A Riot employee reached out relatively quickly, announcing a hotfix for the issue, but communication in the last few days has not been very clear. Players remained relatively in the dark.
Since the official LoL forums are closed, communication has been somewhat fragmented.
This is now the statement: Lead Gameplay Designer of League of Legends, Mark “Scruffy” Yetter, tweeted last night:
The full fix is finally live and should resolve the problems with Poppy Q, Kayn W, and other such abilities. If the problem persists, players should reach out.
Additionally, Yetter states that “innocent victims” of the exploit who were banned will be unbanned. They just need to write a ticket to support, and they will take care of it.
They have also unbanned players who were seen as “intentional feeders” just because they were playing against an exploiter in the past few days.
In 2018, there was a curious report. Player Jian “Uzi” Zihao, then the best ADC in the world, was at the Worlds with his team and spent his time between matches in Korea’s Solo Queue. However, Uzi somehow managed to get himself banned for “intentionally” playing poorly:
One of the best LoL players in the world gets punished … for feeding?!
