Every year during Worlds there is one player that gets a competitive ruling handed to him due to toxicity in SoloQ while playing in a different country. This year there were many more. Riot has handed competitive rulings to a total of 16 players and coaches from across eight teams and five different regions.
The toxicity came to light through routine behavior checks of the pro players accounts that Riot has carried out. Although a total of 16 players and couches received a penalty, only 4 of these were fines while the others were issued warnings. The most notable player to get fined is Royal Never Give Up’s infamous ADC Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao who received a $2000 fine for intentionally feeding and griefing while playing on an account that did not belong to him.
Uzi had been in the news for a while already, however, since Riot Korea threatened to punish him before Riot has now done so. This happened after a Korean Twitch streamer called Uzi a pig on stream which resulted in Uzi intentionally feeding during that came. These events caused quite the outrage and even more so after Riot Korea threatened Uzi with a punishment. The main Riot team most likely stepped in to prevent this from happening while also punishing players who have broken the rules.
Another noteworthy player who is on the list is Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen of Cloud9. He only received a warning due to his toxicity in-game but his warning is noteworthy due to Svenskeren’s history. While he was attending Worlds with SK Gaming in 2014 he was given a 3-game ban due to mocking the Chinese language in solo queue. Riot has noted that his previous ban was not taken into consideration for his current warning as the period between the two is quite long and he has not demonstrated any toxic behavior since 2014 until now that is.
Here is the full list of pros who were either fined or warned and Riot’s post for if you want to read it yourself.
Fines
Danil “Diamondprox” Reshetnikov of Gambit Esports fined $1000
Seunglok “TheShy” Kang of Invictus Gaming fined $1000
Yeonsung “iloveoov” Choi of Afreeca Freecs fined $1500
Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao of RNG fined $2000
Warnings
Daniele “Jiizuke” Di Mauro of Team Vitality
Amadeu “Attila” Carvalho of Team Vitality
Minkook “Dreams” Han of Team Vitality
Luka “Perkz” Perkovic of G2 Esports
Petter “Hjarnan” Freyschuss of G2 Esports
Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen of Cloud9
Stanislav “Lodik” Kornelyuk of Gambit Esports
Zhen-Ning “Ning” Gao of Invictus Gaming
Uijin “Rookie” Song of Invictus Gaming
Li “4LivcloveR” Zhe of Edward Gaming
Jaeha “Mowgly” Lee of Afreeca Freecs
Hyesung “Comet” Lim of Afreeca Freecs
