Radiance Hai speaks out after LoL chat restriction

Hai “Hai” Du Lam is a name that many in the League of Legends community will remember well. His career spanned seven years, from 2012 to 2018, and he’s played on a variety of organizations: Cloud 9, Team Curse, FlyQuest, Golden Guardians, and more.

Hai has found his chat restricted in-game. (Picture: Riot Games)

Hai is probably best remembered for his shotcalling presence and his time on Cloud 9, one only needs to look to when he saved the organization from relegation by subbing in for an underperforming William “Meteos” Hartman before going on to help Cloud 9 to the 2015 World Championship. 

Since his retirement in 2018, he’s had a hand in building the budding esports organization Radiance. “Our vision prioritizes creating a culture of being respectful, friendly, and positive,” it declares in its mission statement. Yet there’s a contradiction between what Radiance promotes and what it's members do, as Hai found when he wrote to Riot Support following a recent chat restriction. 

League of Legends is known for its verbal toxicity and its problems with game-ruining behaviours like AFKing or trolling. Yet Riot seems to take a stance that actively promotes the latter while cracking down far too heavily on the former. 

Upon reviewing the game that got Hai chat restricted, Riot seemed to imply it had punished Hai for commenting on others’ behaviour. Hai admitted in the tweet, “I agree saying he has a shit attitude for being AFK is negative.” However, he also made it clear that Riot should also punish what he perceives to be the greater offenders -- like those that go AFK -- who in this instance went unpunished. Riot also condescendingly added: “Looking back at your own logs can be painful but...it’s important to do so, to learn and to grow.” 

• Read more: Cloud9’s Licorice: “We’ve been trying a lot of new things in scrims for LCS 2020 Summer”

Yet many in the League of Legends community support Hai’s opinion and defended him. “This was pretty tame chatting too...if that is enough to get you banned then half the players should be.”

(Picture: Hai)

Hai followed up with a Tweet saying, “I love how their suggestion to improve your LoL experience is to use the mute button when in this case would do nothing to the two people afk in fountain.” 

Hai’s experience is no different from many other players, who have felt increasing frustration at Riot. The company has seemingly followed a policy of attacking those who type rather than those who leave the game, and it’s cracking down on all the wrong issues that plague the game. The way that Riot Support, and by extension Riot themselves, is handling the problems of their game doesn’t instil confidence in future steps. For the community, it’s only making it worse.