Riot Games posted their competitive ruling against Shitouren and the community is not happy.
The Teamfight Tactics (TFT) Set 13 - Into the Arcane Tactician's Crown has been bogged down by win trading allegations. Riot Games has responded with a competitive ruling, but it goes deeper than that.
Shitouren accused of win trading
Tactician's Crown is the apex international event for Teamfight Tactics. In the final match of March 15, 2025, Cao "Shitouren" Lian was in a lobby with Li "LiLuo" Guancan and Yin "Saopimi" Shengjie. By this time, Shitouren could no longer qualify for the grand final.
The allegations of win trading, or "underperforming," as Riot Games refers to them, are posited against Shitouren. In a round against Saopimi, Shitouren allegedly put himself in a worse position to guarantee a loss, his elimination from the lobby, and LiLuo's qualification to the grand final.
Riot's Competitive Ruling
A long post by @CompeteTFT, the official X account for Teamfight Tactics Esports, outlined the "competitive ruling" against Shitouren.
Upon becoming aware of these allegations, Riot Games conducted a preliminary assessment of the facts, gathered further technical evidence from the Teamfight Tactics game team, reviewed the full game footage, and conducted live interviews with Shitouren and LiLuo to gather individual testimonies and evidence.
Feel free to read the whole post at your convenience, but here are the important details.
Riot Games says that they are "not fully satisfied" with Shitouren's performance and that it "is evident that [he] made suboptimal decisions" in the given round. No disciplinary action will be taken against any player since "Riot Games finds that Shitouren did not breach" the Global Code of Conduct.
Riot says that they had several key considerations in the matter:
- Shitouren mainly played Fight for the Golden Spatula, the Chinese mobile version of TFT. Thus, he is unfamiliar with the setup and platform, as he had to play on a desktop during Tactician's Crown.
- Riot also noted that he was playing on 200ms ping.
- Shitouren communicated to Riot that his decisions during that round were attempts to "salvage a deteriorating position" and that he "would likely lose the game regardless."
- Shitouren had No Scout No Pivot, disallowing him from placing Sevika.
- There were graphical errors in the broadcast. He placed items on units after Combat started, which did not reflect on the broadcast.
Riot's conclusion was that there were no indicators of match-fixing.
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Community reacts to Riot's findings
Naturally, the findings were not what the community expected and garnered a negative reaction.
Dan "Frodan" Chou shared his thoughts on a video via X.
I think this is a mistake... a huge mistake. This is just so blatant. By making this ruling, [Riot Games] are basically protecting people with precedent in the future for those who want to be bad actors. This is unacceptable.
Frodan also brought up the previous case of win trading last Set 11. The ruling was against Gao "A Hao ei" Zihao, and he had to pay a fine for his misconduct.
Kevin "Prestivent" Zou, another participant in this Tactician's Crown, thinks similarly to Frodan. He was also directly affected by the alleged win trading - without LiLuo's qualification, he would have progressed to the final.
Another competitor, Joseph "Dishsoap" Goldsmith, also spoke out.
This sentiment is widely shared across the TFT Esports community.
As of the time of writing, the Teamfight Tactics Set 13 - Into the Arcane Tactician's Crown grand final is ongoing amidst the win trading allegations against Shitouren and LiLuo.
For more Teamfight Tactics news and updates, stick around esports.gg.
