Faker is a true veteran in League of Legends, playing the game for more than 10 years now. Recently, however, he’s been experiencing two specific issues, that he believes need to be fixed to uphold professionalism in esports.
On June 25, T1 released a video, where different players answered and talked about specific topics. In one of them, Faker mentioned how online DDoSing (attacks that intend to disconnect players from their current games) and personal attacks are still problems and need to be addressed as fast as possible by Riot Games.
“Online streams and personal attacks still remain, and it’s crucial for these concerns to be addressed,” Faker said. “If left unresolved, it could gradually undermine the value of esports.” He didn’t expand on it, but his comments seem to suggest that, if this continues, pros will have no ground to test and practice their skills outside official scrims. And if that happens, the level of competition will go down.
It’s not surprising to hear Faker has been experiencing these kinds of online and personal attacks. DDoSing has been an issue ever since League’s esports scene kicked off in 2011. Some people likely launch cyberattacks on pro players for their own entertainment, others probably have some sort of grudge against them. If you watch Faker’s or other T1 players’ streams, which regularly take place on Twitch, you’ll see they are targeted by the DDoD attacks.
In South Korea, where Faker is from and has been competing his whole career, the esports culture is at a much higher level than in Europe or North America. With that in mind, while there are unarguably many more esports fans in the region, there is also a higher number of haters.
The video made it to Reddit the following day, where fans pointed out how saddening it is to see the issue ongoing. “The fact that T1 and Faker still cannot play soloQ without being DDOS is so insane to me,” the top comment reads. At the same time, many claimed it’s nearly impossible to stop online attacks with the current tools.
