Riot Games has cleared up claims of ‘corruption’ within the Mexican League of Legends community, branding it as a ‘smear campaign’ and saying the situation has long been resolved.
Earlier today, a Reddit post titled ‘Corruption Within LoL Mexico’ went live, claiming that members of a League of Legends community in Mexico (LoLMexico) were failing to distribute RP codes, skin codes and other Riot prizes to competition entrants, and were instead allegedly pocketing the virtual goodies themselves – or selling them on.
The post was originally created by Reddit user ArmMeForSleep709, who said he took the text from someone else to post it up for them, and later said he was ‘misinformed’.
Riot Games communications exec Riot Mokarran then wrote a comment explaining the situation.
“Not a single piece of evidence presented in the conversations in these emails shows any wrongdoing from Rioters or people working with them in this community,” he said.
“What is being shown as evidence such as someone sending someone promo codes in an email is in reality an administrator of a HUGE Facebook community sending codes to his regional associates.
“People are being smeared and shown as ‘aware of something happening’ due to having conversations with people who organise events.”
“Things have changed with the fan community of LoLMexico, the people in their staff involved in internal misuse of codes were since removed from it and the whole community was restructured.”
Riot Mokarran said the news was originally published on Reddit back in 2014, and that Riot took it seriously and went through every conversation published.
“I am happy to report that since 2014, we have come a long way,” he added. “I personally have been in charge of community events for LAN since 2015, and thanks to having more staff involved we have managed to implement a system of checks and balances.
“I can honestly say that no organisation working with us has shown any of these behaviors, besides a couple of isolated incidents of not knowing what was or wasn’t allowed, and one of proven misuse, which ended with the community being permanently banned from being supported or even associated with Riot Games in any way, shape or form.
“Things have also changed with the fan community of LoLMexico, the people in their staff involved in internal misuse of codes were since removed from it and the whole community was restructured.”
Santiagofisher, a Reddit user claiming to be the “actual leader” of the community in question, later said: “This is something that Riot Games buried a long time ago, proving that we as a community are innocent.
“The one who ‘leaked’ this is not seen as a good member of the community and is involved in scam situations with hardware companies and other sponsors. Riot already proved we are innocent.”
The original poster added: “In conclusion, the original poster wants to first apologise for making this drama public, but wants us to be aware that more than this is going on. This only scratches the surface of the corruption within LoL Mexico. Hopefully we can raise awareness of these issues.”
Image source: Juan Carlos Arellano/FreeImages
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
