Do Valorant and League of Legends share bans?

Valorant players with bans are reporting trouble with League of Legends and vice versa, which could indicate a dangerous new ban policy from Riot.

League of Legends is known as one of the most toxic games on the market, and science proves it. Unfortunately, Riot’s tactical shooter isn’t far behind on that metric. The company is constantly in an arms race against its own players trying to curb bad behavior. It appears its latest advancement applies bans from one game to the other, and fans are reporting surprise bans as a result. If true, this puts League of Legends and Valorant players in a tighter spot than ever when it comes to bans.

Here are details on Riot’s new ban policy and how players can check if they’re in trouble.

Do Valorant bans apply to League of Legends?

Valorant and League of Legends appear to share certain types of bans, and behavior in one game can lead to punishment in another.

The most obvious case of sharing bans is when a Riot account is banned. This is commonly a result of charging back in-game purchases. This action often immediately results in a permanent ban for the RIot account itself, which means any Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, or any other titles from the developer.

The second obvious case is for hardware ID bans. These are Riot’s most severe punishments, as they target the user’s computer rather than an account. These are triggered by a user repeatedly making accounts after getting banned multiple times on the same computer. In such cases, the hardware ban shares information across Valorant and League of Legends to prevent the user from playing either.

However, players occasionally report bans in one game affecting them in the other. One social media user claims that League of Legends temporary bans can affect Valorant, with error code 61 popping up when attempting to play. However, some cheating forum users claim that they are not shared, which means that Vanguard bans may only apply one game at a time.

Either way, it’s best to avoid bans as much as possible in both Valorant and League of Legends. Those skins are expensive, after all.