League of Legends streamer Brizz94 banned from all Riot titles for toxic behaviour

Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends (LoL), has indefinitely banned Luca “Brizz94” Brizzante, an Italian streamer and retired player and coach, from all Riot titles due to his toxic behaviour.

The ban was announced in a Discord server with several Italian streamers present. Brizz94 then eventually read the statement in a stream.

The translated announcement said that “League in Italy has often had the reputation of a toxic and unfriendly community: we as a company have not been present in Italy for many years, and this has not helped in the perception of who and what Riot does in Italy.”

“The community sees YOU as a reference and is influenced by what you do and say,” it also read, referring to the streamers in Italy. The announcement also added that the “community takes you as a model,” so certain actions and behaviours are not tolerated.

“We have therefore decided to discourage these messages, with an action that is unprecedented in Italy: an indefinite ban on sight on all accounts for the talent from which these chats originate, namely, Brizz.”

This ban was emphasised to have nothing to do with Brizz94 as a person. In the statement by the Riot staff, it read, "I have nothing personal towards Luca [Brizz] and he knows it too, but you can't go on like this anymore."

Riot has also issued a strong warning to other streamers not to work with Brizz94 in the future. They asked that streamers keep things formal and not include him in their broadcasts.

Brizz94 seemed extremely agitated during his stream. “I don’t pay the consequences; I don’t pay them because I can do something else,” a machine translation of his comments during the stream read.

Brizz94 is also a former LoL pro player, playing for various teams as a Support from 2014 to 2020. He last coached aNc Outplayed for a year in 2022.

Recent IP ban in Korea

This ban comes almost right after Riot Korea allegedly IP banned LoL streamer Akshan “TFBlade” Homayouni for toxic behaviour, which consequently led to the rest of the LoL streamers staying in the same hotel also allegedly being banned.

This isn’t the first time that Riot gave an indefinite “banned on sight” punishment to a streamer.

The most popular incident was in April 2016 when Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp, an American streamer, got banned after several top-ranked LoL players and pros petitioned for Riot to take action against him.

Tyler1 built his streaming reputation on years of toxic behaviour, including verbal abuse, intentional feeding, and more, which Riot eventually deemed to be unacceptable.

Tyler1’s ID ban was lifted in 2018 after the streamer made appeals to show reformed behaviour at the time.

Riot Games has tried time and again to be more intentional in tackling this long-persisting problem. In 2022, they partnered with Ubisoft and launched “Zero Harm Comms”, an AI research project aimed at preventing disruptive in-game behaviour.

And more recently, in May 2023, according to a report by Dexerto, Riot also introduced drastic measures that prevented identified toxic players from queueing in ranked games.

Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.

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