As bans come in for off-meta Champions, has LoL gone too far in enforcing picks?

Controversy has wracked the League of Legends community this past week as suspensions and bans have been handed down to players, including pro players and streamers, who step outside the prescribed ‘meta’ of the game.

While punishments for playing Champions that are below certain Mastery thresholds and in certain ways have been banable for at least a year, now it seems that the system has been tweaked to hit many more of what has been called ‘false positives.’

As a result several examples have surfaced on social media showing bans or for players who have picked off-meta and usual picks. Is this protecting players from griefing? Or is it locking down on the very creativity that makes MOBA games great?

Has Riot Games gone too far in banning players for picking unusual picks?

For months now, occasional reports have emerged on Reddit and social media stating that off-meta picks have seen bans under griefing rules.

But a recent plethora of bans have seemingly come out of nowhere, banning players for picking even slightly unusual Champion and build selections.

Team Liquid streamer and former NA player Samson “Lourlo” Jackson was hit with perhaps the most notable ban this past week, one for AP Blitz, a build that while unusual, has been in the game since its inception.

The build, which takes advantage of Blitzcrank’s very high AP ratios on his ult to effectively one-shot opponents is off-meta and non-standard, but hardly griefing. Lourlo claimed he’d “dropped 22 kills” on the build before the ban.

He and other victims of the ban system took to Twitter/X primarily engaging with product and strategy representative of Riot Games Drew Levin.

In response, Riot has seemingly tweaked the standards behind the bans, but they still remain in place.

The conflict raises an interesting question: Just how restrictive should League of Legends be? Many innovations in LoL came from seemingly off-meta picks and builds. Meanwhile, it’s obviously horrible to be in a game with an obvious griefer. As LoL tightens its grip on Masteries (meaning many legacy Champion Mastery rankings will fall), how far can these restrictions go?

After all, why even allow players to pick off-meta heroes and builds if they’re bannable? Just restrict the champion pool and auto buy items at certain thresholds. League has already attempted to regulate the laning phase and jungle pathing through similar methods. Perhaps the next step is removing item builds as a whole, or at least restricting them to certain approved items.