Riot Games imposes strict punishments on Counter Logic Gaming for account sharing.

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Riot Games have imposed severe penalties on the North American team Counter Logic Gaming for account sharing violations. All players except Seraph are impacted. CLG recently chose to opt out of playing in the final week of the North American League of Legends Championship Series to boot camp in Korea. The final ruling can be viewed on lolesports.com.

In the aforementioned statement, Riot Games states that CLG management requested live accounts from Riot to play on the Korean server, however, miscommunication by Riot Games resulted in CLG getting Tournament Realm accounts rather than live server accounts. Riot admits this fault and stated that they sought to rectify this quickly but they discovered that Counter Logic Gaming was engaging in illicit practices such as account sharing.

Citing Rule 10.2.7 of the League of Legends Championship Series ruleset, which states that if a team member has violated the Summoners Code, then LCS Officials may assign penalties at their own discretion. Riot Games also claims that the actions by the members of Counter Logic Gaming have violated the Terms of Service. Riot Games North America has issued the a $1,250 USD fine to the following players:

• Austin "Link" Shin
• Marcel "dexter" Feldkamp
• Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng
• Zaqueri "Aphromoo" Black

In addition, the aforementioned players are punished by Riot Games Korea under the "Regulations on the Sanction of Account Boosting and Other Fraudulent Acts for Professional Players Participating in Official Tournaments" document published on the 7th of November 2013 by NiceGameTv, OnGameNet, Riot Games Korea and KeSPA. According to the ruling, the four aforementioned players are banned from participating in KeSPA/Riot Korea affiliated tournaments for two years starting from the 8th of August 2014. It is unclear if the CLG organization is affected and if so, management faces up to a 5 year ban from Korean tournaments.

Riot Games have previously taken action via fines and suspensions to punish those who have broken the summoners code, such as the 14 day suspension of multiple high elo players for elo boosting and the suspensions of Nukeduck and Mithy for repeated infractions of the game. Riot Korea has been more severe, with Apdo being banned for over 1000 years for eloboosting and removed from the Korean National team for the IeSF World Championships.

Zirene, a caster for the North American Challenger Series added.

This is because to create a Korean League of Legends account, the user must either have a valid Korean Social Security Number (KSSN) or an Alien Registration Number (ARC). But MonteCristo and DoA disagree.

Riot Korea, speaking to Inven in a phone call, added:

There is no discrimination or distinction. According to regulation the accounts have been frozen for 30 days. They did indeed ask Riot Headquarters for Korean accounts during their planning but due to the regions' discrepancy between the terms and conditions they were confused with Riot Korea's ability to issue Live Accounts.

However, Riot Korea is fully capable of giving out these accounts and there was a miscommunication with NA. CLG needed to fill out the proper forms but they chose to borrow the accounts instead. Even during their wait they always had TR accounts. Though we are aware that theirs was not an intent to benefit financially it is still a violation of the regulations.

Pro-gamers are banned for a longer than one year once they are caught boosting. Since they were in Korea this means that they will not be able to enter OGN or KeSPA run tournaments for two years. However, they are free to play in the LCS or the S4WC. They are a professional organization and a total of $5,000 will be levied on them.

This article has been modified to add further details such as the comment by Zirene, the refutals by MonteCristo and DoA and the specific start date of CLG's ban.