While professional players and League Partner Programme creators are often given accounts by Riot, unusually high LP gains since the start of the season have led to Riot disabling these accounts and issuing new ones in their place.
Riot-created accounts tend to start at Diamond MMR, allowing known professionals to more quickly climb the ladder rather than “smurfing” their way from the bottom. However, fellow high-tier players had noticed that many of the game’s top-ranked accounts were Riot-created and sat towards the higher ranks despite not having noticeably better winrates than others.
High elo streamer and former EU LCS champion Mike “Wickd” Petersen previously tweeted his findings on the topic, comparing players’ Riot-created accounts with their usual ones and noting that “Riot accounts seem to be [a] free 500+ LP Boost in comparison to skill level.”
Was bored and checked the entire top 50 Ladder and looked at the Accounts that I think are new Riot Accounts.
They’re definitely new accounts.
I also looked further down in Challenger and it only gets worse. I have found plenty of Diamond players in Challenger. pic.twitter.com/eLBak3d4DO
— Wickd (@Wickdlol) February 21, 2021
In a mid-patch update to 11.5, Riot have now announced that all of these accounts would imminently be disabled and allowed to decay out of the high-elo tiers.
The update adds that this only affects account created after January 7th, i.e. since the start of season 11 on January 8th. While no cause of the bug was provided, Riot did explain that this “resulted in an unfair advantage over non-pros in reaching the top of the ranked ladder.” In doing so, they confirmed suspicions that many of the top-ranked accounts may not have been as high had they been playing on regular accounts.
When professional players wish to climb on a new account, they will often be given one by Riot that will start off with an artificially boosted Diamond MMR. This allows the player to more quickly reach the upper ends of the ladder and is granted by Riot with the knowledge that the player has already reached such levels on their own previously.
Not only does this then save time for the player, but also allows Riot to prevent many lower elo games from being stomped through by professionals as they climb on fresh accounts.
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