Riot Phlox is a designer working on the Summoner’s Rift team for League of Legends, and they lost so many games with a high death count that their account got flagged for intentionally feeding.
Patch 12.22 added some exciting new items to the game, items with the potential to bring out the best in champions left by the wayside in Season 12.
One such champion is Ryze, whose overall winrate hasn’t climbed far above 45% for years. Rod of Ages used to be his go-to item in early seasons, and, with RoA back in the game for Season 13, Ryze players were certainly hoping that the item could revitalize the over decade-old champion.
Riot Phlox, a designer working on Summoner’s Rift, spammed Ryze games. These games went so poorly that Riot Phlox’s account received a 14 day ban. A ban that was rescinded way before 14 days had passed.
League of Legends dev recieved 14 day ban for playing poorly
Ryze isn’t a champion known for his consistency outside of pro play, and getting him off the ground in an average solo queue game can be difficult. His early game isn’t too great, and the amount of time it takes him to become relevant leaves the champion vulnerable to getting shut out of the game.
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Phlox played over 40 Ryze games in one week, and, while they weren’t all failures, he had his fair share of rough games in there. Multiple games with a death count in the double digits flagged Phlox’s account for intentionally feeding, and landed them with a 14 day ban.
However, this ban didn’t last the 14 days. Not even close. Phlox was promptly unbanned, something that the LoL community is calling out the developer for.
riot phlox got banned for playing like shit, then came into work next morning, unbanned himself, proceeded to play like shit, meanwhile everyone else was getting banned for typing poop pic.twitter.com/q7nSsQGr0H
— HANCOCK (@HANCOCK_LOL) November 23, 2022
Phlox himself posted a screenshot of the chat ban to a discord chat with the caption “I guess I shouldn’t’ve played Ryze.” The screenshot has since circulated through the LoL community via Twitter.
He then continued playing Ryze with mixed results. They have an overall win rate of 42% with the champion across all their games in the pre-season, and an average of 8.3 deaths per game according to op.gg.Could this mean that Ryze buffs coming soon? We’ll have to see what the future holds.