Nearly 300,000 accounts just found out the hard way that Riot Games has zero patience for rank shortcuts. On September 17, 2026, Riot announced it had suspended 296,416 accounts across League of Legends and VALORANT for what it bluntly labeled rank manipulation, and the wave was big enough to snag some very recognizable names in the process.
Riot’s public statement drew a hard line: boosting, smurfing, and hitchhiking are all cheating, full stop. According to the company, Vanguard’s boosting detection had expanded from League of Legends into VALORANT earlier in the summer, and the bans had been rolling out steadily ever since.
When the ban hammer hit the front page
The fallout became personal fast. Streamer Trainwreckstv told his Kick audience that his League account had been banned after queuing Ranked Flex with fellow content creators and pros including Trick2g, Tyler1, and Yassuo. His rank got reverted, meaning he’d have to climb back from scratch, and he insisted the only thing he was guilty of was having famous friends.
Trick2g took a more combative route, posting a video appeal aimed directly at Riot’s Drew Levin, League’s Head of Business and Director of Product Management. He argued the automated review had misread a routine account swap, explaining that his group switched accounts when a lower-ranked friend couldn’t queue with them, then returned to their mains once ranks lined up. It’s the kind of enforcement action that echoes what happened when a VALORANT pro was banned from Envy, another reminder that Riot’s competitive-integrity net catches names you actually recognize.
The wrinkle in Trick2g’s defense: he’d been playing alongside Alicopter, a multi-season Challenger-ranked player who’d landed in Gold after Flex Queue placements, a detail Levin was quick to point out.
Riot draws the line, then softens the tone
Riot’s original announcement didn’t leave much room for interpretation: {{“PSA: Boosting, smurfing, hitchhiking… it’s all cheating. Vanguard’s boosting detection expanded from @LeagueOfLegends to @VALORANT earlier this summer and bans have been rolling out ever since. 296,416 rent-a-rank customers served and counting.”}} Riot said in its statement.
Levin’s first reply to Trick2g was blunt, telling him his own explanation was basically the definition of boosting. He walked that back a day later, apologizing for what he called an off-the-cuff and incurious reply, while making clear Riot’s stance on smurfing and boosting remains unchanged. He did concede the company hasn’t been clear enough about when playing with friends crosses the line.
That ambiguity is the real story here. A ban wave this size shows Riot is serious about enforcing its own rules across two flagship titles, but the Trick2g dispute exposes how blurry the line still is between a friend-group flex stack and outright boosting. It’s the same tension that runs through broader competitive-integrity scrutiny across esports, where the definition of cheating keeps expanding faster than the community’s understanding of it, and it’s worth remembering that League-adjacent misconduct has already shown how quickly disciplinary consequences can follow once Riot decides to draw a line.
