Why Is Tyler 1 Trolling Again

Update (Jan. 8, 2018): Tyler1 turned to Twitch at 3 p.thousand. CST today to stream his first League of Legends match following Riot Games' decision to elevator his ban on January. 4. Tyler1'south render garnered more than 380,000 concurrent viewers at point of publish. A clip can be seen beneath of his reemergence.

Original story: It's a new year and a new competitive flavor for League of Legends, and it may be fourth dimension for Anarchism Games to reconsider its permanent disciplinary ban on notorious troll Tyler1.

It'southward going to have a lot of explaining about what happened and why. This situation digs into some of the about challenging aspects of online gaming in 2016, and how tenuous the control of these games can exist for the people trying to police the customs.

Okay, so what'due south a Tyler1?

Tyler1 is a Twitch streamer, YouTube content creator and League of Legends player who was banned from the game for his persistent and outrageously toxic behavior in Apr 2016.

If y'all visit Tyler1's YouTube channel, which has 450,000 subscribers, or his webpage where y'all can buy a #FreeTyler1-branded tank height, you will encounter a imprint graphic that lays out Tyler's claims to fame:

Tyler1

In the paradigm on the YouTube channel — only not on the webpage — there is a strike through the word "Toxic" and the word "Reformed" has been added underneath it.

Those three claims pretty much sum up the Tyler1 story. The Challenger tier is limited to the superlative 200 solo-queue ranked accounts in each geographical League of Legends region, such every bit N America, Europe, Mainland china or Korea.

League of Legends is ane of the most popular games in the globe, and this competitive tier is and then exclusive that if you finish the annual competitive flavor at this rank, Riot sends y'all a jacket to commemorate your accomplishment. Information technology'southward kind of similar the ones golf pros go when they win the Masters. Co-ordinate to Tyler1's Twitch page, he was the 13th-ranked solo queue actor in North America during the 2014 flavour.

Tyler is a "one-trick pony" player; he just plays a character named Draven, a flashy, axe-throwing executioner. This is noteworthy for a couple of reasons.

Draven, Tyler's only competitive character

Riot

League of Legends gets a residue patch every two weeks, in which the game designers tweak impairment and health numbers and sometimes alter the mechanics of champions who are performing too well or not well enough, too equally changing the items that the characters buy over the course of the game.

The fortunes of champions rise and fall with the patch bicycle, and many competitive solo players try to exploit the strengths of the acme "meta" champions to gain an edge over their opponents as they attempt to climb the ranked ladder. Being competitive with a broad range of characters helps you ride these waves and changes.

But non Tyler1. He e'er picks Draven. That means he has to constantly outplay opponents who are selecting flavour-of-the-month champions who may have a statistical border. Draven has not been considered a top champion for his role during any fourth dimension in the last several years, and as of January 2017, Draven is ranked fifteenth out of xviii marksman characters.

That means Tyler had to exist really, actually adept to climb into the Challenger tier playing this champion. To proceed the golf analogy going, this is like winning the Masters, or at least placing, using only 1 social club.

And so what happens when Tyler can't selection Draven?

The League of Legends ranked draft arrangement allows players on each team to "ban" several champions from being used in the game before the players select their characters. Since Draven is considered to be pretty weak, he isn't usually a candidate for a ban. Withal, if Tyler'south opponents recognize him — because they tin can see that he is streaming — they may ban Draven to "tilt" Tyler; to make him aroused and throw him off his game, or they may selection Draven for themselves. And sometimes his teammates might ban Draven to mess with Tyler.

When Tyler is denied his Draven he becomes…

The most toxic player in N America

When Tyler became tilted, either due to being denied Draven, his perception that his teammates weren't doing well or considering of whatsoever other matter that might go incorrect in a game, Tyler would throw a tantrum.

Riot has pretty potent policies against calumniating chat, particularly when the abuse relates to race, gender or sexual orientation, contains threats, or encourages other players to commit suicide. Tyler was a prodigious trash-talker — he was specially fond of telling people to kill themselves — but his flaming wasn't what made Tyler reviled among top players and persona-non-grata at Riot.

Tyler'south signature criminal offense was his habit of intentionally feeding or "inting" in ranked matches. He would fill his inventory with Tear of the Goddess (considering QQ), and then he'd repeatedly run down the centre lane, giving the enemy team experience and gilded for killing him until they overwhelmed his teammates and ended the game.

While a lot of coverage of Tyler's behavior and subsequent punishment focused on harassment and abusive chat, which is easier for not-League players to understand and is more than closely coordinating to widely covered bug of social media trolling and harassment, Tyler's confusing game behavior is what made him famous and got him banned.

League of Legends is a game that'southward easy to disrupt if yous want to exist a jerk

The goal of League is to destroy the nexus structure at the heart of the opposing base, and your characters accept to level up a certain amount merely to push button through the base defenses. If at that place were no enemy team on the map, information technology would probably withal take about ten minutes to win a game, and even one-half-hearted resistance from a few opposing players tin can stretch that past twenty minutes.

There is finer no game to play when a player like Tyler loses his atmosphere during the draft phase and then starts inting as soon every bit the game starts, merely the other nine players are stuck in in that location for twenty minutes waiting out the inevitable effect of 1 player's bad behavior. Information technology'south beyond infuriating.

Here'due south one typically egregious example of Tyler1's beliefs I establish documented among the numerous Reddit and forum threads well-nigh him: In this video, originally posted April 21, 2016, Tyler's team is winning. Tyler kills 2 players, and the midlaner on the squad, ROBERTxLEE, who is capturing this video, finishes off two other fleeing enemies. As the team moves to seize objectives to capitalize on this success, Tyler demands the blueish buff, which is a stat-enhancing aura a actor can claim from an objective in the jungle.

He says: "Pls don't test me. Delight. Trying reform."

Robert takes the vitrify.

Tyler then tells the opposing jungler to buy an detail that gives her an increasing stat vitrify every time she gets a kill or an assistance, and he starts running downwardly the middle, intentionally feeding, which causes his team to lose a game they had been winning.

After Robert posted video of this, Tyler flamed him on Twitter, insisting: "im fuckin reformed loser child."

League of Legends is considered to have one of the more toxic communities in gaming, only these kinds of antics are uncommon at the very top of the ranked ladder. Since he was and so highly rated, Tyler was doing these things in games that frequently included professional players, popular streamers and Riot staff. He was pissing off players who had a vocalism.

Tyler was as well a ane-flim-flam histrion of an unpopular champion and, although he was streaming, he was relatively obscure prior to April of concluding year. That's when Meteos chosen Tyler out on Twitter for toxicity. Meteos plays for Cloud9, which is a top professional squad in the North American League Championship Series, so his complaints got a lot of attending. Tyler responded indignantly, claiming that Meteos was also toxic.

The dispute raised Tyler'south profile. Suddenly, instead of just being a challenger-tier Draven player who sometimes acted similar kind of a childish dick, Tyler had become THE MOST TOXIC Player IN N AMERICA. His viewership and fame increased past several orders of magnitude.

Tyler quickly figured out that the community was rewarding him for his bad behavior, and he decided to make existence an asshole his personal brand. Instead of inting occasionally considering he was angry, he'd practise it all the fourth dimension to entertain his viewers. He created an "int list" of players he disliked on his stream, some of whom were pros, vowing to "feed fifty kills" as soon every bit the game started when these players were matched onto his team.

He also created a "hype" video in which he sarcastically promised to reform his toxic means over a montage of clips of his most outrageous beliefs, and claimed he'd have a 100 percent win rate and would exist the top-ranked player in every League of Legends region if it wasn't for his losses acquired by intentional feeding.

This video currently has over 2 million views on YouTube.

Riot decided information technology had had enough of Tyler. Riot'south standard nuclear option disciplinary activeness is to ban someone'due south account from playing the game. This ways the player loses their lucifer history stats, their ladder progress, their rewards from earlier seasons, their collections of runes and champions and any cosmetic items they have acquired. The player tin, however, beginning from scratch with a new account, though they can lose their new account also if they continue to break the rules.

Tyler made a mockery of this punishment. He accumulated at to the lowest degree 15 account-level bans prior to April of 2016, when Anarchism gave him an "indefinite ban" from playing the game. This meant that any account he was discovered using would be banned, even if he hadn't cleaved whatever other rules on that account. Tyler, as a person and not an account, had been removed from the game. This punishment is and so rare and so extraordinary that if you Google it, virtually all the search results are most Tyler.

Then, he's a troll. Didn't he get what he deserved?

Riot was absolutely justified in hitting Tyler with an extraordinary punishment in April. He had repeatedly shrugged off lesser sanctions, and with his stream fans egging him on to greater acts of public trollishness, Riot had to hand him a significant public punishment to reaffirm its commitment to civility in its game

Despite the fact that Tyler's trolling was admittedly as bad as you imagined, and probably worse than you realized, he is at present claiming to have reformed. And there'due south a good reason it should at to the lowest degree exist considered.

Banning Tyler didn't assistance fight toxicity

What, you might ask, has Tyler1 been doing since he was banned from playing League of Legends?

It turns out, he's been playing lots of League of Legends. He gets identified and banned every fourth dimension he climbs upwards near the superlative of the ranked ladder. He'due south not hard to spot; there aren't that many one-trick Draven players at the top of the League ladder. He always just gets some other account and starts over. It has become lucrative for him to do this.

Bad beliefs brought Tyler more attending than his skilled playing, but his fame exploded after he was permanently banned. Tyler'south stream and his videos are more than popular than ever now that he'due south been indefinitely banned. He withdrew from college to get a full-time YouTuber. He's become a sort of Robin Hood figure to trolls by playing and streaming right nether Riot's nose.

Yous take to know the history to sympathize some of these stories. Phreak is a Anarchism staffer and e-sports shoutcaster who streams League in the high diamond tiers. He's in about the top quarter of the top one percentage of players.

In April, prior to Tyler's ban, the 2 players had been matched onto a squad together when both of them were streaming, and had a heated encounter during champion draft. Tyler didn't like the champion Phreak picked, and threatened to int. Phreak then threatened to ban Tyler's account. Another player on the team dodged the game by closing the customer before the game started to avoid being stuck in a ranked lucifer with an intentional feeder. This sent all the players back to the matchmaking lobby and they didn't actually play.

In late May, a few weeks after Tyler's ban, Phreak answered a question from a viewer about Tyler on his stream. "I'1000 sad that, like, someone that vile is making and so much money off the game now," he said, referring to Tyler'due south streaming revenues and donations from fans.

Tyler's response: "hehe xd." His fans loved information technology.

In Nov, Tyler and Phreak ended up on opposing teams, both playing marksmen and therefore laning against each other. Tyler1, who seemed to be simultaneously in a towering rage and on the verge of tears throughout the video, played very aggressively from the start of the game, and ran over Phreak like a train.

Tyler's claim to be the all-time Draven histrion in the world isn't an idle boast. He isn't considered a promising candidate for professional play because he is incredibly immature, he only plays ane champion, a lot of the decisions he makes in the game are questionable, and many pro players detest him and would non want to be on a squad with him.

Just the mechanical aspects of his play are superb. Watching him contrivance skillshots looks like something out of The Matrix. Imagine a higher basketball player who has the athletic ability to exist an NBA star, simply who hogs the ball, makes bad plays when he gets upset, loudly talks a lot of trash, and who sometimes commits flagrant, intentional fouls. That'due south basically Tyler.

Phreak, who has reached Diamond I rank, is i of the best League players working for Riot. But having a task — even a job straight related to making League of Legends — imposes a time burden that makes it difficult to play at Challenger level. And Phreak is 29 years old. Historic period-related degradation of fine-motor skills and slowing of reaction time begins in the mid-20s. It's imperceptible in about contexts, but information technology matters at the highest competitive levels of video games.

It is therefore expected and unremarkable for a Rioter to lose a game to a 21 twelvemonth-onetime Challenger-tier player. Just to the trolls, their champion, a renegade shitlord playing in defiance of a permanent ban, had struck a blow against the hated regime. That the account he was playing on was permanently banned immediately after the game was the perfect capstone to the legend.

Tyler's YouTube video of the game has 1.4 1000000 views. A Reddit thread about "the long-awaited battle" has eight,000 upvotes. Tyler'south punishment hasn't struck a blow confronting trolls. It has emboldened them by turning Tyler into a martyr and giving the community's worst elements a banner to rally effectually.

It's better for Anarchism and the community if the story of Tyler1 becomes a story about reform. The perception amid trolls is that Tyler was rewarded for bad behavior with popularity and money, and his connected League of Legends play suggest that being the worst you peradventure can be in games where trolling is rare volition bring you success.

There's no real way to cease Tyler from playing, and Tyler knows it. Removing him from the game completely, in some means, only gave him more power over Anarchism.

This kind of punishment is rare

Here'due south one manner of looking at this story: A player misbehaved in a video game over a period of years. He was handed punishments of increasing severity and, when he refused to change his behavior, he was banned from playing. He should learn a lesson, abound up and move on with his life.

That might be the right course of activeness for a normal player, just for someone playing Challenger League, the game is a hard thing to surrender.

Mainstream audiences and even most gamers don't take games as seriously as they have other sports, merely Tyler1's skill is the product of thousands of hours of practice spent honing an boggling natural talent. This isn't "just a game" for players on his level; Tyler's ban from League is every chip as large a deal as a top college actor getting barred for life from playing basketball or football.

And gifted players are allowed to continue playing college and professional sports even after doing things that are much worse than trolling and griefing.

What Tyler has been doing for the concluding eight months is a uniquely Sisyphean loop: He'due south climbing up through the ranks of League'due south ladder until he emerges in the upper tiers of the Diamond league. Then he'south unmasked, banned and kicked back to the bottom to get-go over. He has continued to play and continued to stream, simply the punishment has effectively stopped him from competing among League's best.

It's unfortunate that Tyler1 got famous for being a troll rather than for being great at League of Legends, but Tyler1 is great at League of Legends.

If Anarchism's ban remains in identify, Tyler will probably go on streaming and making videos, and continue to milk his identity as a troll-streamer. Over time, his views will drop as his fans get bored of his antics. In the meantime, his League skills will grow rusty because he can't strop them against top competition, and within about five years the ravages of historic period will render him unable to compete in gaming at his current level. The clock is ticking on any hope he has of capitalizing on his League skills in any lasting manner.

Maybe he will go back and finish college, and perchance he'll pb a normal or even a successful life. Merely will he e'er be amongst the best in the earth at annihilation ever again? Nigh certainly not. League of Legends is the virtually special thing near this kid. It is maybe the best thing that volition ever happen to him in his life.

Careers of peak-tier gamers are short, and Tyler has already lost almost a year to this punishment. The time he's already lost is a proportionate price to pay for to the damage he'south done to others. If he is reinstated, and is willing to play by the rules, he will non take gotten off easy.

Information technology seems like Tyler might have figured out that he liked beingness a Challenger-tier player better than he likes existence a reviled troll, and he might be moving in that direction. He curses out loud and criticizes other players while streaming, but he no longer flames in-game chat. His outbursts are only audible to those watching his streams. I couldn't find any reports of him inting recently. In fact, he earned a rare ribbon for teamwork on an account he was playing in September.

Phreak, for his office, said he was not opposed to reinstating Tyler'south privileges if Tyler can prove he has reformed, though he expressed incertitude that Tyler could change. The idea of Tyler reforming has get something of a running joke since the ban took place.

But in that location's precedent for lifting such a ban. In 2013, the peak ranked European histrion, Incarnati0n, was banned from the game for toxicity, chat abuse and cheating. He was using DDOS attacks to force his opponents to disconnect during ranked games. In 2015, citing the player's efforts to reform, Riot lifted the ban, and Incarnati0n, who now goes past Jensen, was quickly signed to Cloud 9, where he became teammates, ironically enough, with Meteos.

For punishment to be effective, it has to exist consistent. And for reform to be possible, there has to be a path offered back towards the light.

Reacting to the possibility of hope

Tyler streamed himself watching Phreak's argument about the possibility of lifting the ban. I've watched the video of this several times, trying to figure out what Tyler's reaction ways.

In that location's a moment in that video where someone tells Phreak that they haven't seen Tyler typing corruption in chat recently, and Phreak says: "Tell that to his other 15 accounts that got banned."

"Twenty-two," Tyler says on his stream, correcting the count.

Is he bragging about how much he has been banned? Is information technology an expression of his frustration at how many times his progress has been reset? Is he only a weird kid fixating on a weird affair? Is he sincere when he says he's reformed? He'south been sarcastic or one-half-hearted about it before. Is he even capable of keeping his rage in check?

Tyler'due south behavior was very serious inside League of Legends, and the glee with which he flouted the rules, the contempt he showed for lesser punishments and his prominence as he was doing these things was bad for the game and its customs, and justified the severe punishment.

Tyler has been excluded from the the thing he's best at for nearly a year of his short tenure equally a top gamer. A popular, competitive player investing in the community is certainly worth more to Riot than a well-known troll who is rewarded for his ain worst instincts. A troll they know they tin't actually control.

Giving Tyler something to lose may be the best way to make sure he plays the game as it'due south meant to be played, and not in a mode that does maximum harm to others.

And if he goes back to inting and flaming? Riot can always ban him again. And again. And again.

---

Daniel Friedman is the Edgar award-nominated author of Don't Ever Get Old, Don't Always Look Dorsum and Riot Most Uncouth . He lives in New York City.

trappwerseree.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/10/14179366/league-of-legends-riot-ban-tyler1

Share this post