The Twitch streamer Kami_KhaZix has won 76 times in a row in League of Legends and announced that he wants to break the record for the longest winning streak in EUW. For this, he wanted to gain recognition and attention on Reddit from LoL. However, the response was not as positive as hoped.
Who is that? The Twitch streamer Kami_KhaZix has about 17,000 followers on Twitch. During his streams, an average of between 200 and 400 people tune in. Last year, he was online for 1200 hours. (via Sullygnome)
He is one of the smaller LoL streamers on Twitch, but he invests a lot of time into the game and apparently wants to rise up.
That was the announcement: Over the weekend, the Twitch streamer announced on Reddit that he had won 76 times in a row (via reddit). He aims to break the record for the longest win streak in EUW in the “Duo ranked” category.
What was the problem? Despite 76 wins in a row, Kami_Khazix was still ranked “Silver 1” in LoL, which is a below-average rank. Normally, he should be much higher with 76 wins in a row.
Therefore, players suspected that the Twitch streamer had intentionally lost many games before his record attempt, to drop far enough in rank and matchmaking rating (MMR) to play against “easy opponents” who are much weaker than him, to then easily take them down.
A second thread on Reddit emerged, which received much more attention than the one from Kami_Khazix himself.
Here, people asked: How can it be okay for someone to intentionally play dozens of games poorly, so that he is now rated so poorly that he can roll over weak opponents?
Because Kami_KhaZix’s main account is a “Grandmaster” in LoL, which is the second highest rank in LoL – with this second account, which won 76 games in a row, he is ranked Silver. This behavior of projecting oneself as a weaker player despite being a strong player is called smurfing (after the English word for smurf).
It is suspected:
- The Grandmaster player bought a 2nd account that had already lost a lot
- He then played it and intentionally lost to get even worse in the matchmaking rating
- After he was very low and got terrible opponents, he started to play seriously and started that winning streak
This behavior is viewed critically in the community. Some hope that Riot will temporarily ban the account to investigate this further. They believe that “intentional losing” (inting) is a behavior in LoL that should be punished with a ban.
How did that turn out? There was quite a shitstorm against the Twitch streamer. He seemed to have calculated this and flirted with it.
He then named his Twitch stream: “Your favorite duo from Reddit is back.”
This morning, however, he announced that he and his duo partner lost for the first time after 79 wins in a row.
Smurfing is popular on Twitch, frowned upon in the LoL community
What’s behind it: It is a known phenomenon in LoL and Twitch that strong players engage in such runs, deliberately obtain a weak account, and then want to show how quickly they can climb to the top.
Thus, the Twitch streamer TFBlade wanted to become the champ in every region of LoL.
The problem is that on the way up, they encounter a bunch of players whose games they ruin because they suddenly have to face a LoL pro disguised as a weak player.
This is behavior that Twitch streamers can succeed with and that viewers like to watch, but no one is eager to be the victim of such “smurfs”. Additionally, the question is delicate regarding how streamers obtain such “second accounts” and whether this always complies with Riot Games’ rules.
The Twitch streamer IWillDominate was temporarily banned in LoL for similar behavior. At the moment, however, Kami_Khazix seems to be spared from a ban.
