A League of Legends YouTuber, Yaegerlol, has come under fire for his questionable tactics in a YouTube series titled "Iron to Diamond." The series was intended to showcase the journey from the lowest rank, Iron, to the prestigious Diamond rank. However, Yaegerlol's approach involved throwing over 40 matches intentionally to reach the Iron rank before abruptly switching gears to achieve an impressive 90% win rate with the champion Yone.
In League of Legends, reaching the Iron rank can be a legitimate challenge for high-level players without resorting to intentional losses. The game's competitive environment relies heavily on teamwork, and having a player deliberately throwing matches can severely impact the experience for others in the match.
Smurf and alt accounts are increasingly common in League of Legends, with some players obtaining Level 30 accounts from websites for minimal costs. These accounts, often leveled up by bots, risk being flagged and deleted by Riot, the game's developer, which has been actively cracking down on such practices.
VaporaDark, another content creator, exposed Yaegerlol's account with evidence that aligned with the account used in his "Iron to Diamond" series. The match history and account name provided indisputable proof that the accounts were one and the same. This revelation brought attention to the controversial practice of using purposely deranked accounts for content creation, raising concerns about the integrity of the game's solo queue environment.
While it is uncertain whether Yaegerlol personally deranked the account or purchased it from someone else, the outcome remains the same: matches were manipulated, and the gaming experience was compromised. Purchasing a deranked account not only supports these services but also creates a demand for such questionable practices.
Although not every match is affected by content creators using these tactics, incidents like this raise alarms about the overall health of League's solo queue environment across all ranks. The community is concerned about the impact of such practices on the game's competitive integrity and the experience of players at various skill levels.
