Insidious Gaming disowns iSG JKS following its TLC 2014 suspension

Garena has banned another two players from playing in Garena-organized League of Legends (LOL) tournaments and leagues for two years, and suspended the team Insidious Gaming Jakarta Scourge (iSG JKS) from The Legends Circuit 2014.

This move comes in the wake of Garena Taiwan banning two players for elo-boosting.

(See: Golem and VanillaV from Taiwan’s Machi E-Sports banned from GPL for elo-boosting)

Similar to the Machi eSports case, players Patrick “zekeanology” Keane and Liew “YouReekOfFear” Zi Yuan were banned for spoofing accounts. Liew was playing on Keane’s account as the team assumed that the registered captain had to be the one in contact with the game admin. Team captain Keane himself was not playing.

Keane said in a Reddit plea to Riot Games that the duo had originally intended to switch their accounts back, but “forgot to” when they ran late for the next game. Following complaints by other players, the game admin approached Keane for clarification that he was indeed on his account.

Rise above…or not.

According to the official Garena announcement, the admin was initially told by Insidious Gaming management that Keane was not meant to be playing, even though he was. Naturally, the admin moved on to message Keane, who proceeded to lie about him being on his account.

As a result of that, both Keane and Liew have been banned from all Garena-sanctioned LOL tournaments for two years, while their teammates, who aided and abetted the cheating attempt, have been banned from the tournament, effectively rendering iSG JKS impotent.

Keane is arguing his case against Garena’s decision to ban him and suspend his team, but his stance seems to hold little water. He uses the recent Team Mirrors ban as fodder (it had spoofing players too) and claims that the ban should have been a decision made by both Garena Malaysia and Garena Singapore, rather than one made solely by the former.

Unfortunately Keane and the rest of iSG JKS seem to have missed the point of their ban and suspension. The team was caught committing fraud, as per the strict guidelines of The Legends Circuit. The crime was still committed, regardless of intention.

Insidious Gaming has since retracted its contract offer to iSG JKS, but has appealed to Garena for leniency on the team’s behalf since it had been playing under Insidious Gaming’s banner.

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