Players found guilty might have to face more than just account suspension.
Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, gearing up for a major crackdown in League of Legends, with "soft inting" now a primary target.
The devs seem to be taking this seriously, with Vanguard-backed hardware bans placed on the table.
This was brought up in a social media post, by LoL game director Pu “Pupulasers” Liu on Tuesday (10 April).
Riot looking into permanent hardware bans
According to Pupulasers, soft inting is considered a “huge problem”. Andwith Vanguard now in place, placing permanent hardware bans could be on the table for such violators.
Pupulasers also asked for feedback from the community about what should be done to players who do this often.
“Now that we have machine ID info with Vanguard, how quickly should we transition punishment from account level, to hardware level?”
What is soft inting?
Soft inting in League of Legends refers to a form of intentionally losing or sabotaging the game in a subtle or less obvious manner compared to blatant intentional feeding ("inting").
A player engaging in soft inting might make poor decisions, position badly, or play recklessly in a way that harms their team's chances of winning, but without making it blatantly clear that they are doing it on purpose.
This behavior is harder to detect and prove compared to overt inting.
LoL player community split on the matter
Many players were quick to respond to the question. Redditor StillIDie pointed out in his post that many players, especially lower elos, don’t understand who actually might be soft inting, or using a more advanced strategy like split-pushing, or taking off-meta picks.
According to StillIDie, it might be better to “start cleaning out higher elos”, especially those caught on stream so the example is clear for all.
Others on Reddit suggested to hand out warnings first, instead of immediately doing a permanent hardware ban.
LoL content creator Netherim pointed out how this could potentially pose a problem, since it might be hard to distinguish actually soft inting and “someone genuinely having a bad game.”
Riot has yet to finalise their plan of action against violators, but like many players said, distinguishing them from innocent ones might prove to be difficult.