League of Legends pro player for Team Dignitas, IWillDominate, has had all of his accounts permanently banned from the MOBA title and received a one year suspension from playing - making him the first professional to be bit this hard by the ban hammer.
While some have argued that Riot is crushing the dreams of 22 year old Christian Rivera, the developer has made it quite clear it doesn't want players like IWD involved with the game. Looking back at the man's history, he has eight previous tribunal rulings, seven of which issued punishments, some resulting in temporary suspensions. Despite this however, Rivera continued to harass other players - in-fact in the past few months it's been said that he only got worse.
Ultimately this led to IWD becoming part of the top 1 per cent most complained about players in the game. This is hardly the image Riot want to perpetuate for its professional teams, so it's now made it impossible for the caustic player to continue to represent his team and the game itself - for at least a year. Of course by banning all of his accounts and giving such a long time gameplay suspension, Riot is hoping that he won't ever return to the League. To find out for sure, we'll have to wait another 12 months.
There's been no official response from Dignitas or from IWillDominate on the forums or on the team's twitter, though it seems likely that a comment of some sort will be made shortly. Presumably, wanting to appear as professional as Riot hopes the rest of the team is, Dignitas will say that it's a shame the developer went to the lengths it has, but that it respects its decision. It will still continue to work with IWD but will ultimately need to find a replacement jungler.
Something along those lines anyway.
What do you guys think of a move like this? Obviously nobody really liked playing with or against IWD so is it fair to ban him? He is a young guy coming up in the professional gaming scene so he's going to make mistakes just like other sportsman, but does he deserve to be banned for so long?