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Nearly 300,000 LoL and VALORANT Accounts Penalized for Rank Manipulation
Riot Games revealed Thursday (17) that it has penalized 296,416 League of Legends and VALORANT accounts for rank manipulation. The actions are part of the rollout of Anti-Boost, a Vanguard system designed to identify players using accounts they do not own to artificially manipulate ranked matchmaking.
The figure covers penalties issued across both games since late 2025. That does not mean, however, that all nearly 300,000 accounts were permanently banned. Depending on the case, Riot can remove improperly earned ranks, revoke rewards, and issue temporary suspensions. Purchased accounts or accounts without a legitimate owner can be permanently banned.
How Does Vanguard Anti-Boost Work?
Anti-Boost was first launched in League of Legends in September 2025. After nearly a year of testing in the game, the technology was also adopted in VALORANT.
The system looks for cases where a significant portion of an account's ranked points are earned by a higher-rated player. In practice, Vanguard tries to detect changes that do not match the account's usual behavior, such as when someone else starts using it and suddenly performs at a much higher level than its owner.
When boosting is detected, points or rewards earned during that period can be removed, returning the account to its previous level. Riot also issues a temporary suspension, starting at three days and increasing for repeat offenses.
The player responsible for the boosting can also be penalized. If Riot determines that the behavior has become recurring and can link the booster to their main account, that account can also receive escalating suspensions.
Playing with Boosters Can Also Lead to Penalties
The measures do not only target players who hand their accounts over to someone else to climb the ranks. Riot is also targeting players who repeatedly benefit from grouping with boosters or smurfs whose ranks have been artificially lowered.
Among the behaviors cited by the company are sharing an account with a boosting service, paying boosters to play on smurfs in the same party, giving a lower-ranked account to a more skilled friend, buying or borrowing an account to face weaker opponents, and deliberately losing matches to lower MMR.
The list also includes using accounts that do not belong to the player to carry friends in ranked queues. In those cases, the player who received the advantage can also lose the rank they gained.
Having an Alternate Account Does Not Mean a Ban
Riot distinguishes between alternate accounts and smurfs used to manipulate matches. According to the company, around 9% of accounts active in League of Legends and VALORANT ranked queues each day are secondary accounts.
About half of those accounts are considered relatively harmless. Riot also says that more than 70% of players have at least one alternate account, even if they do not use it every month.
For that reason, Anti-Boost was not designed to automatically punish anyone who owns more than one account. If a player created the account, leveled it themselves, and does not share it, Riot considers it a legitimate alternate account. The system is primarily focused on account purchases and account sharing used to circumvent matchmaking or artificially increase other players' ranks.
Even after the 296,416 penalties, Riot claims the system is still not operating at full capacity. The company plans to expand the removal of improperly earned ranks in the coming months, increasing pressure on boosting services, account sellers, and other forms of ranked-queue manipulation.
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Featured image credit: Riot Games
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