Riot sanctions nearly 300,000 accounts for rank manipulation

Riot published the figures on September 17, when Phillip Koskinas, the head of the company's anti-cheat division, revealed that Vanguard had taken action against 296,416 accounts for what Riot calls “rank manipulation.” The crackdown covers both League of Legends and VALORANT, after the system originally tested in League was expanded to Riot's tactical shooter.

Unlike traditional cheating involving third-party software, Riot's latest system focuses on players attempting to unfairly increase their rank. This includes boosting, where a more experienced player takes control of someone else's account to raise it to a higher rank, as well as account buying and account sharing.

Riot also specifically identified so-called “hitchhikers.” These are players who may not hand their account over to a booster themselves, but repeatedly queue with a player who is using another account or a smurf account in order to benefit from the manipulation of the matchmaking system. In such cases, Riot can roll the player's rank back even if they were playing on their own account.

The penalties depend on the specific circumstances. Riot says boosted accounts can have their earned rank and rewards removed, along with a temporary suspension that becomes longer for repeat offenses. Purchased accounts or accounts with no legitimate owner can receive permanent bans, while known boosters can also have their main accounts suspended.

The Anti-Boost system was initially introduced privately in League of Legends in September 2025, after which Riot spent nearly a year developing and testing it. The system was expanded to VALORANT during the summer of 2026, allowing Riot to detect similar forms of ranked manipulation across both games.

The figure of nearly 300,000 sanctioned accounts does not mean that every one of them was permanently banned. Riot stressed that the system applies different types of penalties, while VALORANT alone has seen more than 33 million RR, or Ranked Rating points, removed after being gained through boosting.

Riot also said that Anti-Boost has not yet reached its full potential and that detection will be further improved over the coming months. The company estimates that around 9% of daily active ranked accounts in League of Legends and VALORANT are secondary accounts, although that category includes legitimate alternate accounts as well as shared and compromised accounts. Simply using your own alt account is not automatically grounds for punishment.

Riot has also tightened its measures against smurfing in VALORANT, including the detection of boosting, win trading and stream sniping. The company has said that penalties are only applied once its systems identify a sufficiently strong pattern of suspicious behavior.

In addition, Riot is accelerating the rollout of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and hardware verification through TPM 2.0, with the aim of making it more difficult to use purchased, stolen and shared accounts. Vanguard is therefore increasingly focused on preventing ranked manipulation before it happens rather than simply punishing players afterward.

The crackdown has already affected several high-profile streamers. Trainwreckstv said following Riot's announcement that his League of Legends rank had been rolled back, claiming the issue stemmed from playing with other well-known players and streamers. He had previously received a 31-day suspension in VALORANT in a similar situation.

Riot has made it clear that the goal of the crackdown goes beyond individual bans. The company wants to prevent players from progressing through the ranked system by using other people's accounts, boosters or smurfs, ensuring that a player's rank more accurately represents their actual skill level.