Tencent has issued over 3,000 Chinese League of Legends players with three-year bans on April 24 for abusing an old bug with the popular Forgelord, Ornn.
Ornn has been one of the most popular champions in Season 10, particularly in pro play, for his ability to provide teammates with upgraded items as well as dealing high DPS, despite being considered a tank.
While he is one of the current meta’s power picks, Ornn has still had some glitches and after one of his latest bugs was patched, thousands of Chinese players were banned for abusing it in-game.
A bug with the champion’s W, Bellow’s Breath, turned what is normally a short-range attack into a global ability, damaging all enemy players and minions on the map, after Ornn glitches into a wall.
YouTuber Vandiril was among the first to share the Ornn bug, highlighting just how potentially game-breaking and damaging it could be to low-health opponents.
While the glitch is difficult to reproduce and only effective in certain situations, Tencent revealed in a statement that they had issued 3,300 suspensions for the offense on April 24.
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“The Tencent Game Security Center will continue to punish acts that pollute the gaming environment and undermine game fairness,” the statement read, according to a rough translation.
They also revealed that the “severe punishments” were taken to dissuade players from replicating future bugs in League of Legends.
“This time, a total of 3300 players were punished due to multiple malicious triggering of the use of Ornn’s skill bug, which resulted in the account being suspended for 3 years,” it continued.
Many League of Legends players felt that the punishment of a three-year suspension was quite harsh and as of now, only those who had played on the Chinese server have been banned for exploiting the bug.