Riot Cracks Down on Smurfing: Streamer Pentaless Gets Banned Across All Accounts

19 Aug

Martin Arévalo-Östberg

During their Season 3 announcement, Riot Games announced several changes coming to League of Legends. Among these was the promise to begin cracking down on both smurfing and boosting. Now, Riot is living up to that promise after banning Twitch streamer Pentaless, who recently gained popularity for his flawless record in an 'Iron 4 to Challenger' challenge.

Who Is Pentaless?

According to Pentaless' own Twitch bio, the player has reached the rank of Challenger every year since Season 10 (2020). His climb did not end there, however, with Pentaless hitting Rank 1 in both Season 13 and Season 14. In recent weeks, Pentaless, along with his Twitch channel, started gaining notoriety.

During a streamed Iron 4 to Challenger challenge, Pentaless was able to get to Platinum without losing a single game. With a flawless 40-0 record in hand, the streamer boasted of the feat in a tweet. At the same time, though, Pentaless took a jab at lower elo junglers and their inability to clear the jungle fast enough, something that didn't sit right with a large part of the League of Legends community.

Bringing Down the Ban Hammer

After the tweet, Pentaless carried on with his challenge. Just days later, a message popped up in the streamer's League of Legends client: he'd been temporarily banned (30 days) across ALL accounts for 'rank manipulation'. That's right, not only was the account used for smurfing banned, but all other accounts belonging to Pentaless as well, including his main.

"After receiving player reports and automated review of your gameplay, we discovered unusual skill changes due to intentional modification of your rank or the ranks of others through unfair play."

The player argued that the account he was using for the challenge was hand-leveled, and certainly not purchased. This is not, and will likely never be, against the League of Legends Terms of Service (TOS).

The ban, however, still stood due to another purchased account linked to Pentaless, according to Drew Levin (Product & Strategy at Riot Games).

A New Dawn in the Fight Against Smurfs

In their latest Dev Update, Riot assured everyone they would be taking the fight against smurfing to a new level for the remainder of 2025. Few people could have expected for it to happen this fast, though.

The fact that Pentaless was banned across all accounts, and not just the one linked to 'rank manipulation', demonstrates Riot's commitment to removing smurfs from League of Legends altogether. Pentaless may have suffered the consequences, but for the rest of the player base, this is certainly a step towards a brighter future.

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Feature image credit: Riot Games

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