Team I May’s Hankil “Road” Yoon was fined today for verbal abuse during a Korean ranked game. He has been charged a one-game suspension in addition to a $2000 fine for his racially-charged rhetoric. Here is the official post for the ruling. According to Riot, this was not the first time the professional League of Legends player has verbally assaulted his teammates or opponents. With such a history, Riot felt it was necessary to make an example of him.
Here is a snippet of their findings:
On October 5, 2016, I May’s Hankil “Road” Yoon verbally abused one of his teammates in a ranked game on the North American (NA) server. After discovering this instance of toxicity, Worlds officials investigated Road’s accounts in various regions for additional instances of verbal toxicity. On his NA account, teammates have reported Road in 5 of his last 60 games. Out of those five games, Road was found to be moderately abusive toward a teammate in one game. On his Korean (KR) account, his teammates reported him in 22 out of 168 games between August 23 and September 23. Chat logs revealed multiple instances of moderate toxicity, including cursing at and insulting teammates. Additionally, Riot has issued his account an automatic 10-game chat restriction for chat toxicity.
As you can see, that is a very clear history of verbal abuse. Road’s teammates had reported him in roughly 13% of his games. That is no small number, especially for a player of his caliber.
With the World Championship going on as of writing, team I May is forced to scramble for a comparable back-up. Although it is likely to have no significant impact, professional League of Legends players is not in the NFL, and two grand for an infraction is quite a sum.