Someone tries to sell SKT T1 Faker’s name, Riot won’t let them

The popularity of T1 mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is by no means decreasing in South Korea, as his former summoner name was recently put up for sale. 

A whopping $39,000 was the asking price for Faker’s previous name of SKT T1 Faker. This name belonged to Faker on the Korean LoL server before the organization rebranded to T1. Since then, the name has seemingly been grabbed up by another player who has now attempted to sell it. The whole situation attracted the attention of Riot Games, who decided to take action and stop the sale. It is against the LoL terms of service and operating policy to sell a summoner name.

As the biggest legend in LoL history, there is no doubt that many players would want to be named after Faker on live servers. Some might just want the name because they are fans, while others would want to be disguised as Faker. No matter what the motivation is, the player who currently owns the name clearly saw a lucrative business opportunity in attempting to sell it off. 

For years, Faker himself has been playing under the name Hide on Bush. Besides his usual solo queue account, professional players are also given official Riot accounts that usually have the player’s team name and in-game name in them. For Faker and T1, this changed when the SK Telecom T1 rebranding saw the team’s name shortened to just T1, and several SKT T1 summoner names were left open. People from the community have since then wondered why T1 and Riot didn’t secure those names to avoid situations like this one. 

In the future, Riot might be more aware of the second-hand market and how some popular player names can be used to earn money. 

Selling names in League of Legends is nothing new

While it’s the first time a case like this goes public, it seems that selling account names of professional players has happened before. In Faker’s case, it has gone to an extreme since he is a legendary player. Putting his name at a price of 44 million KRW sounds crazy, but people with enough money might have ended up purchasing it if Riot didn’t interfere. Riot has struggled to punish resellers in League of Legends for ages, and this is just another example. 

Since the very early days of the game, LoL accounts have been on sale frequently on eBay and other platforms. These accounts are usually fresh level 30 accounts that have been leveled up for resale purposes. While Riot often tracks down those accounts and bans them, the second-hand market for League of Legends is still going strong. People are also selling accounts that they don’t use anymore for big sums of money, with ranks, achievements, and skin collections all potentially boosting the value of an account. 

What rank is Faker? 

Faker is currently in Challenger rank on the Korea League of Legends server. With over 700 games so far in season 11, Faker has acquired over 600 LP on the ladder by playing a variety of different champions. He is currently ranked as number 305 on the Korean server, and could probably be higher if Faker went all-in on the climb. For now, Faker is streaming a lot and playing many different champions to entertain his viewers on Twitch. Recently, Faker has been playing a lot of Sett and Lee Sin.