File this one under the more unusual stories to come out of the coronavirus pandemic. With the COVID-19 situation being as bad as it is, a League of Legends player was recently told by Riot Games that his username was no longer appropriate.
The player in question, 24-year old Joao Corona, had been using his family name, Corona, as his in-game handle for over a year when, on April 1, he received a message from Riot telling him to change his name if he wanted to keep playing League of Legends. “I thought it was amusing at first, as almost every game a player would say in chat ‘nice name’ to me,” he wrote in a now-popular Reddit post, “but I just shrugged my shoulders and emailed Riot in the hopes of them agreeing that it was a funny situation, and my name would be white-listed.”
Corona’s initial request to keep the name was ultimately denied by Riot, with the developer not providing an exact reason as to why. Given the circumstances, and the notoriously toxic part of League’s playerbase, it’s likely that Riot was cracking down on any name that could allude to COVID-19, as other players have reported coming across rather insensitive names like “CoronaComin4U” and “ChinaVrs.”
On the bright side, Riot Games has since changed its mind and given Corona his username back, thanks to the pressure from his Reddit post. This came after League communications lead Ryan Rigney responded to Corona’s post by saying, “We don’t think forcing a name change in this instance is in line with our policies, so we’ll be looking into this situation.”
League of Legends is free-to-play on PC.
Source: Reddit, Kotaku
