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League of Legends game director gauges community on 'soft inting' punishment

Soft inting is when a player purposely avoid playing with the team or for objectives, and LoL game director Pu Liu says Riot recognizes it as a major issue.

TJ Denzer

July 9, 2024 7:40 AM

Image via Riot Games

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Soft inting is reportedly a problem Riot Games wants to nip in the bud in League of Legends, but it’s also gauging the player base on how to go about it. Game director Pu Liu recently took to social media to ask players how strict Riot should be in addressing a player that soft ints in a game, whether punishment should begin at the account level or immediately go all the way to a hardware-level suspension or ban.

Liu put the question before the League of Legends community via his personal social media this week. For those not in the know, soft inting is when a player doesn’t directly throw themselves to the other team with purposeful deaths or sabotaging allies in teamfights (which is just regular inting, short for “intentional feeding”). Rather, it’s when a player plays away from the focus of the game, farms side lanes, avoids teamfights and objectives, and passively contributes to a certain loss, and Liu says Riot Games has the means to track and identify players that do that now.

League will be looking into increased detection of and punishment for soft inting, which is a large problem in the game. Now that we have machine ID info with Vanguard, how quickly should we transition punishment from account level to hardware level? Immediately or some lenience?

— Pu Liu (@RiotPupulasers) July 9, 2024

In saying so, Liu asks the community how strict should Riot Games be in its punishment. With its current tech, League of Legends has the option to penalize, suspend, or ban an account, but can also go as far as to ban a PC or internet IP itself from playing the game (the aforementioned hardware-level punishment). It seems many of the League community also recognize the problem, but would like to see a step system put into play where players have a chance to change their behavior before more hardcore punishments.

League of Legends has kicked off a summer of events that includes the launch of new mage Aurora, but it’s still clearly dedicated to ensuring the game remains safe and fun. As we wait to see what form that takes, stay tuned for more updates here at Shacknews.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.