What happens to the toxic League Of Legends players who just won’t quit the game? Riot Games bans them and they just keep coming back for me. If Riot eliminates their accounts, they just buy a new one or if they ban their IP address, they just use a VPN. Some players are just so addicted to the Rift that they can’t stop themselves from playing. Some disappear into the annals of history, forever stuck raging in Diamond one, while others reach Legend status. They foster a community for a game that does not want them around.
Tyler1, the only League Of Legends streamer to ever be permanently banned from the game, is still making money off Riot Games’ baby. It doesn’t matter that he’s been barred from ever playing the game, he’s still managed to be one of the game’s most watched streamers. Riot made a big deal about making sure he never plays again, but all it’s done is kept him from playing on stream. He still clocks countless hours into his main, Draven, by playing off-stream. His fans love to watch Tyler1’s personality shine through, whether it’s watching him play horror games or judge other Draven main’s skills.
The alpha male’s newest stunt takes some of League’s most toxic high-tier players and pits them against each other. The Tyler1 Invitational was a mock LCS, where 16 teams full of fanboys, trolls and self-proclaimed alpha males duked it out on Summoner’s Rift. The finals were a who’s who of League’s most toxic personality. Tarzaned, a Nidalee main known for letting his emotions get the best of him and rage quitting games, battled against OddOrange, another jungle main who’s also known for being pretty toxic. Their teams are full of past LCS hopefuls, high-ranking players who tried their best to go pro but never really made it. Either there work ethic was terrible, they flamed too hard in scrims or just never managed to perform on the competitive stage. Either way, they played for Tyler1’s amusement.
The games themselves were pretty uneventful, it was Tyler1’s casting that really shined through. The bald-headed doofus first broke through the mainstream when he got into a public feud with the face of League Of Legends, Phreak. For his tournament, he decided to spoof the caster by casting the tournament himself, complete with all of T1’s charm and yelling.
“Reformed Tyler1” might be a meme in his Twitch chat, but I’m really starting to believe his behavior’s improved since he first broke onto the scene. He’s moved way past the “kill list” he used to keep for players he deemed “unworthy” and I haven’t seen him rage quit a game in months. He’s managed to find this balance between his on-stream persona and his rage, which doesn’t make him any less fun to watch. Instead of telling you to kill yourself or scream some racial epithet, which the old Tyler1 wasn’t against, he’ll explain why you made a bad play and pinpoint your mistakes. He’ll do it in his aggressive way, but you can tell that it comes from a place of knowledge instead of hate.
I’ve been trying to get an interview with Tyler1 for over a year now, so if you see this, can you send it to him?
