League of Legends cracks down on smurfs: “We’re going to take big swings like we did against inting and griefing earlier this year.”

Riot Games has announced a crackdown on smurfing in League of Legends. The developers will target boosting, hitchhiking, and more.

League of Legends will take major swings at smurfs throughout the remainder of 2025. Players will see action against those who boost, hitchhike, purchase accounts, and use bot accounts. According to Riot Games, there will soon be Vanguard updates as well. Patch 25.18, in particular, will have improved detection models.

"Throughout the remainder of 2025, we’re going to take big swings like we did against inting and griefing earlier this year and address some of the most common forms of game ruining behavior that you are seeing in League today," the announcement stated.

In addition to this, Riot Games revealed that their True Skill 2 (TS2) project will further reduce smurfing thanks to improved accuracy on matchmaking rating (MMR) detection. The developers began testing TS2 in North America in March and expanded to un-Ranked queues in Korea just last month.

According to the developers, high-skill players now place in correctly skilled games in about five matches. This is three times faster than before.

Riot Games clarified key smurfing terms to keep everyone on the same page as well. Boosting pertains to when a player queues up on an account that's not their own to inflate its MMR. Meanwhile, hitchhiking means a player queues with another account, usually a booster, to get carried to a higher rank. As for purchased and botted accounts, they violate the terms of service because they are not leveled up and used by a single player.

"One grey area worth clarifying: if you make alt accounts yourself, and for your use alone, you’ll be safe (as long as you don’t deliberately derank it)," the announcement added. "That said, we’re working on how to better place these accounts’ skill levels accurately to avoid having these sorts of accounts get into lower skilled players’ games."

That's all for now. For more League of Legends news and updates, stick around on esports.gg.