Two professional League of Legends players banned by Riot Games are about to learn their fate ahead of the upcoming LCS season.
Erlend “Nukeduck” Holm and Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez both received bans until the end of 2014 for persistent in-game “toxicity” when they were signed to Ninjas In Pyjamas.
Riot reviews professional player bans before deciding whether it will be allowed to lapse and is expected to make an announcement shortly on the future of both players following a meeting of the player behavior team.
One player Riot deemed to have reformed, the other not so much.
A source close to Riot told the Daily Dot that Holm would be unbanned following an improvement to his in-game behaviour. This would free the path for him to join a team ahead of the next LCS split. The Norwegian mid-laner had been heavily linked with a few teams in the off-season. With a potential further suspension hovering over his head some organizations were reluctant to commit to signing him, however.
Holm’s former team mate Rodriguez will not be so lucky, however. The ban will remain. “Not only did the player persist in AFK related toxicity,” the Riot source said, “but there was also bot related activity on one of his accounts.” The bot-related activity was linked to levelling an alternate account from level 0 to 30.
While the source couldn’t tell us for how long the ban would remain in place, they did state that Rodriguez would at least be ineligible for the next split following their decision.
Update 12/10 11:35am CT: Riot has lifted on the ban on both players after what it calls “significant improvement” in their behavior.
Image via Riot Games
