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The purging draws near.
League of Legends has been around since 2009, and in that time, the MOBA has been hugely popular—hitting more than 150 million LoL accounts. Most developers or publishers like to brag when they’ve hit certain milestones, but Riot Games is pushing for a different way to “celebrate.” In lieu of the many inactive accounts these days, Riot will be deleting these old League of Legends accounts.
The announcement of Riot cleaning house and removing inactive players from their game might shock you, but there’s a good reason behind it. Riot permanently removes only the older and barely used accounts in League of Legends. If you haven’t logged into League for some time now, we’d say now’s your chance to do so—at least if you think they’ll include you in this mass deletion.
Tidying Up
Previously before Riot Games thought of deleting old League accounts, they launched two-factor authentication—2FA for short—to improve player security. It’s normal for online games to deal with issues and data-related concerns. Players can avoid their data getting stolen by ramping up their privacy and security efforts. And according to Riot, the next step after implementing 2FA is to keep things tidy.
Riot will delete inactive accounts in their games—not just League of Legends. But as one of the oldest and most prominent games in Riot’s repertoire, the MOBA is likely to take one of the biggest chunks regarding account numbers. Thankfully, picking which accounts to delete isn’t through sheer blind selection. If you play the game actively, you don’t have to worry about saying goodbye to your rank, champions, and skins.
The Definition of Inactive for Riot
According to Riot Games, an account can be considered inactive when there’s not been any kind of login activity across any of their games, web properties, or applications for more than three years. Say you haven’t played a game or two for a while, nor have you logged into a game client, but if you logged into any of Riot’s web properties (support.riotgames.com, leagueoflegends.com, valorantesports.com, etc.), then your accounts will still be deemed active.
Grounds for Deletion
Thankfully, Riot has adopted a conservative policy for determining which accounts will be deleted. To qualify for your account to be terminated, you must meet all of the following criteria:
- The account did not purchase any premium game currency (like Riot Points) in its lifetime
- The account has a playtime of fewer than 20 hours
- The account does not have rare or limited edition entitlements
- The account did not receive or collect any game currency in its lifetime
- The account is “inactive” (see the definition above this paragraph)
If you don’t meet the following, then your account is safe.
You’ve Got Mail
If, for some reason, your account has been marked for deletion or your account meets all the criteria, you still have a chance to save it—that is, if you check your emails. Riot will automatically send you an email warning you about the deletion. As long as you address it, it’ll get their support a chance to return your account to you.
Why Riot Has Decided to Delete LoL Accounts
People go AFK, but not for years. By deleting League of Legends accounts as part of their ongoing 2-factor authentication process, Riot Games can ensure that all accounts across their games are more secure and safe from those looking to misuse personal data. While this means that the account numbers for the MOBA will take a hit since there’ll be no forgotten or smurf accounts taking up space, it’ll be a good measure of how many people there are actually playing the game. Riot has not disclosed how many accounts will be caught up in the deletion wave, but we can expect numbers to come up soon once the numbers have petered out.
When Will it Begin?
Riot plans to bring the inactive account deletion policy to light in the coming months to give players some space to opt-out of the process. If you think your League of Legends account is on the chopping block, now is an excellent time to at least log in for a few hours or play a couple of matches.
