Why is Kanye West’s rival’s name banned in League of Legends?

A fan has noticed that the name of Kanye West’s latest online rival has been banned from use in certain names.

International superstar Kanye West has recently gotten attention for going on a social media crusade against comedian Pete Davidson, who is rumored to be dating Kanye West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian. A League of Legends player discovered that the SNL cast member’s name was banned from as the moniker for a Clash team, but if that’s the case, why is Riot banning Pete Davidson’s name?

Why is Pete Davidson’s name banned in Clash?

Reddit user u/Threeleggy took to the League of Legends subreddit to post his discovery of a strange banned phrase. In the post, the fan says that after repeatedly trying to register a team under some variation of the comedian’s name, the automated language filter system blocked its use. The original attempt to label the team “Pete Davidson Fan Club” with the tag SKT failed, leading them to believe that Riot was protecting the old tag of three-time world champion T1, previously known as SK Telecom T1 or SKT.

Pete Davidson banned from Clash team names?
by u/Threeleggy in leagueoflegends

However, after attempting to name the team a bunch of different variations, only a few permutations managed to slip through the filter. The options that the filter did allow were Pete, Davidson, Pete David, Pete Davids, Davidso, P Davidso, and Pet Davidson. Anything using a more direct version of the name Pete Davidson failed to get through. Why is Riot’s language filter preventing the use of the name in League of Legends?

Fans in the thread joked that Riot Games was on “Team Ye” in the unfolding drama involving Kanye West and rival Pete Davidson, but the likelihood of the multi-billion dollar company changing their language filter particularly around Clash teams to protect a musical superstar’s hurt feelings is very low. That said, there’s no logical explanation as to why these combinations of letters would trigger a language filter unless they’d either been accidentally picked up by the filter or purposefully implemented.

For now, the strange interaction has no explanation, but it has still given many fans a good laugh.