Friday 6 November 2015

How RiotGames banned me for a crime I didn't commit

Hello,


My name is Gvozden on November 05 2015 at 12:45am I received two automatically generated e-mails from leagueoflegends@email.riotgames.com and noreplay@riotgames.com informing me that my League of Legends account was suspended after a ‘thorough investigation’ that determined that I was involved in ‘Elo Boosting’. While I expect that most people’s next reaction will be to close this page and move on I would plead for your attention concerning this grave matter. I know that most of you will at this point either close this page or go straight to the comments and say nasty things. If you are not interested in reading the entire post so feel free to scroll down to the bottom and just read my closing thoughts. This post comes with a public google drive folder. I am a player on EUNE and am not to be mixed up with C9 Stardust on EUW. He does not play with me, I do not own the account and actually didn't even know he existed until I accidentally searched my name on LOLKing EUW.


My lolskill.net: http://www.lolskill.net/summoner/EUNE/C9%20Stardust


The reason I come to the community for help is because in all my attempts to reach Riot Games for information or a review of my case has failed. I have been met with scripted messages, rude dismissals and slow replies. I believe that in reaching out to the community I might be able to find a few good souls that will give me absolution, because Riot Staff are completely denying the possibility that this ban was a mistake. I am constantly battered with evasion tactics meant to get rid of my support ticket rather than resolve my issue. So here is my story.


I have been playing League of Legends since July Season 3, since then I have only been punished for one offence, during the season 3 bug that applied extended chat restricts to accounts while the tribunal system was in ‘extended maintenance’ (basically got a 50 games chat restriction for a fair reason I was a flamer back then, however afterwards got ~500 more games chat restriction). I accepted this as being my own fault however since then I have been a reformed individual doing my own thing and trying to improve. I have never been involved in any sort of Elo Boosting and the only action that has even warranted Riot’s attention was me using MK Jogo, after a warning I stopped doing so.


During this long post I will open my case to the community and be judged by my peers on whether my account has been boosted or not. I understand that the actions that follow will most likely result in the deletion of this post, a ban from this subreddit and considering Riot’s vindictive nature a permanent suspension from League of Legends.


During Season 5 I have escalated my rank from Gold 3 to Platinum 1 in a manner of 8 months, (January - August) and then dropped down to Platinum 5 after my 11th year of High School began and I could not dedicate as much time to playing. During my mid-term break I once again rose in rank and managed to maintain a rank of Platinum 3 for two or so weeks. I was then banned for having my account ‘ELO / MMR Boosted’.


I informed the Captain of my Ranked 5s team and subsequently my entire team and classmates in school. Considering how much time I spend playing League and the dedication I present to improving most everyone was shocked by this state of events. I was encouraged to email the support team as there had obviously been a mistake. I have provided in a google drive folder copies of emails exchanged with Riot Support staff as well as screenshots and other evidence linked to my issue.


the TL;DR of my talk with Riot Support was:


  1. My initial message explaining my issue
  2. A scripted message that answered 0 of my questions/concerns
  3. My second reply asking for a supervisor and to be spoken to with a non-scripted response.
  4. Riot’s second response telling me and I am very much paraphrasing here “we think you are boosted, we don’t care to look into your case further. F**ck off we consider this matter closed.”
  5. My third email explaining that I do not consider my issue resolved, that I am un-happy with my service. I asked for the Head of Riot Support. Since then I have had no replay.


I understand that my words will never convince most of you that I am innocent so I will attempt to dissect my case and prove my innocence through statistical data.


Firstly what are common signs of Elo Boosting:


  1. Drastic change in play style
  2. Drastic positive change in MMR/Rank usually leading to a tier promotion
  3. Change in IP address the account is being used from
  4. Drastic increase in KDA/win rate
  5. Change in player behaviour: login times, duo queue partners etc.


So let's break down my entire season and see if and why I showed all or any of these traits.



  1. What is my play style? I have been an AD Carry main the entire season and played most of my games in the role. My main champion is Vayne followed by Lucian who I have stopped playing recently due to the fact he is not as strong any more.


Let us see if there is any unusual champions played for an ADC main.
Ok, no unusual champions in the top 13 and the 13th one only has 6 games played. The only major new champion I have started playing recently is Cait as I spammed around 22 games in the past week and a half. So that's a big change but I really haven’t done particularly well also around 8 of those games were Ranked Teams 5v5. Some screenshots of this are included in the supporting google drive folder. Our first trait of Elo boosting does not support the argument that the account has been boosted. However if all the other signs point to boosting we have an issue, so let’s look if the other signs do point to boosting.


2. A drastic positive change in MMR during this season. Well I do not have access to an actual graph of my MMR so I went to the closes thing I could find the LoLKing score graph.


Well no real surprises here, no point where I instantly went up in Rank, some bumpy spots some win streaks nothing hugely out of the ordinary. In fact since July I have ended up at pretty much the exact same rank. Through the months I have not even gone up a full tier. OK interesting so either I haven’t been getting boosted, or I my booster is absolute garbage and can’t even boost to diamond.


A further analysis and annotated version of this graph is shown in the Google drive folder provided. It shows when and why the most dramatic changes in MMR happen.


3. Change in IP addresses the account has been used from. Well this one I can’t really prove to you considering I do not have any logs of this. So we can move forward with you thinking I am a liar, if so we have 1 out of the 5 ‘Elo Boosting’ traits. Let’s keep going, number 3 is a pretty important one.


4. Dramatic increase in win rate/KDA. For this one we are gonna go back to OP.GG and look at my over recent Win rates/KDA and average win rates through the season. Additional pictures not included in this post are included in the public google drive folder.




These two images display my highest Win Rate and Highest KDA champions, Nothing out of the ordinary to indicate Elo boosting is there? Not that I can find. The highest KDA/Win rate champions are the ones I played 1-5 games total in the season out of my 700 Games. So that sample size is easily dismissed.


5. Final sign, so abnormal login times and playing partners. This is another fairly difficult one to show but I’ll try my best.


Abnormal login times, I can really only prove this one through showing you that I play Ranked 5s with my team regularly. Each day from 9pm-11pm.


Playing Partners: Below is a list of all the people I have gotten in game with in the past 20 games.


Let’s see who the people are,


TheShadowMaster3: My team’s top laner, 8 Ranked Team games 1 DuoQ game
The Inquisition: My team’s support 8 Ranked Team games
Anarchtye: My team’s mid laner, 8 Ranked Team games
oG98: Best friend, My team’s jungler, 8 Ranked Team games
iSTICK: oG98’s Platinum 5 smurf, 2 DuoQ games, both lost


So considering that I have continuously played ranked teams and several duoQ games in the past 20 with My team mates. Other than that I have been spamming some SoloQ games when I get the chance, especially during the weekend.


When taking into consideration all the data I have just given you about my accounts recent activities it would not exactly be a leap of thought to determine the fact that I am not actually getting boosted as Riot has claimed in their email’s and support team responses.


When putting the 5 signs of Elo Boosting we defined earlier we can put them in order of importance:


  • Drastic positive change in MMR/Rank usually leading to tier promotion
  • Change in IP address the account is being accessed from
  • Drastic increase in KDA/win rate
  • Drastic change in play style
  • Change in player behaviour: login times, duo queue partners etc.


Based on this order of importance and the case presented above we see:


  • No evidence of dramatic positive increase in MMR/Rank (not elo boosted)
  • No evidence for or against a change in IP addresses accessing the account (unknown)
  • No evidence of drastic increase in layer KDA/win rate or general performance (not elo boosted)
  • No evidence of drastic change in play style (not elo boosted)
  • No evidence to show for change in player behaviour, little evidence showing no change in player behaviour. (slightly tilted towards not boosted)


What we have classified as the most important sign of Elo Boosting shows comprehensive evidence against the statement that the account has been Boosted. The second most important sign of Elo Boosting does not have comprehensive data for either side of the argument. The third and fourth most important signs show comprehensive data against the statement that the account has been Elo Boosted. The least important sign shows little evidence at all however the evidence presented does not support the statement that the account has been Elo Boosted.


I have provided evidence of my account not being elo boosted along with analysis, acces to my OP.GG and lolking.net links as well as an additional Google drive folder with screenshots and more data analysis in an attempt to prove my innocence.


It is now on the community to judge me and decide if or if not I was Elo Boosted. Most likely I will not get my season rewards, nor have my ban lifted and my name cleared. In fact Riot will most probably attempt to stop word of this from spreading and ban my account permanently. However at this point this false ban has crushed my spirit and love for the game almost completely and so a permanent ban would not affect me as much as you might think, but what needs to happen is stories like mine must be heard, and spread because this sort of false ban and no case revision policy by Riot Games CAN NOT exist in the year 2015. It is unethical, shady and quite frankly repulsive to see this from a company that has always claimed love for their community and fans.


Thank you for your time everybody,


In the off chance you have any questions I can be contacted at ironman.requests@gmail.com I expect to get a good amount of spam and haters but if you are interested in hearing some more information or giving your support then feel free to write any time and I’ll do my best to reply.