Players still seeing usernames in League of Legends ranked

Riot Games introduced a system that hides Summoner’s names during ranked champion select, but players claim that they can still see ranked usernames in League of Legends.

For most of League of Legends’ history, seeing the usernames of your teammates in champion select was simply a part of the game. The player’s in-game name would be displayed underneath their champion icon and players were free to check their teammates’ match history and identify who they were playing with. Riot Games saw this causing several issues ahead of games, during them, and afterward. In 2022, Riot introduced a system that obfuscates the names of players in ranked lobbies in order to prevent some unwanted behaviors. It seems that players are already bypassing this measure, but how are they doing it?

How do players see usernames in League of Legends?

If you’re just playing normal queue or other unranked modes, you’ll be able to see your teammates’ names just fine. If you’re in a ranked game, the only way to bypass the name-hiding system is to use forbidden programs or methods. As the name-hiding system has been introduced to League of Legends, some players have begun to figure out ways to bypass it quickly. Riot Games said that apps that reveal this information would have been asked to remove the feature as of November 2022. It’s clear that not every program able to scrape teammates’ names has complied, as stories of players knowing their teammates’ aliases have spread, along with other complaints.

In Oct the LoL team posted about Champ Select Anonymity. Next week with 12.22 we will be updating policy to align with this. Apps that reveal player names or stats in Champ Select will be asked to remove this feature immediately. This specifically applies only to Ranked Solo/Duo

— Riot Games Developer Relations (@RiotGamesDevRel) November 10, 2022

Stories have begun to pop up of players in ranked lobbies listing their teammates’ names in chat or commenting on their past games. These suggest that the changes made by the League of Legends developer didn’t fully remove the information from being accessible. Some instances involve other players calling out their teammates by name, others commenting on previous games that should be invisible to them. There are likely several methods for bypassing this system, but all of them violate the game’s terms of service.

Why did Riot Games block seeing usernames in League of Legends?

The reason for this change in 2022 was to combat several toxic behaviors in solo queue. In most games, players being able to look up their teammates’ games and make judgments about them based on their recent games proved to cause more toxicity than Riot Games would like. But it’s not the average solo queue games where it really became a problem. High ELO matches are where the problem really starts to rear its ugly head.

In high ELO, players would sometimes recognize others whom they didn’t like and intentionally throw the game, dodge in champion select, or otherwise make the experience unfun for everybody else. This was especially a problem with high-profile streamers who would be targetted by unfriendly players in solo queue and have their games thrown. The steps to hide players’ aliases were meant to combat this, and while it’s made it harder to do, it’s not impossible.