Why I Don't Play League of Legends Anymore

It’s a grave understatement to say that as a kid, I was addicted to League of Legends.

I came home from school every day just to play for hours until I fell asleep, never giving two shits about anything other than my League rank which I thought would be dropping every second I wasn’t online. If I was deprived of the game for a few days, I turned schizophrenic, like a crack addict in withdrawl. I was no Faker, but I’m pretty certain I played more hours than him per day, and it’s no exaggeration to say that my obsession was almost fatal – I could play for over twenty hours without food, water or sleep.

Things have gotten better since then. You might be glad to know that I deleted the game two years ago, and I haven’t touched it ever since.

In fact, I avoid people when they talk about it. If someone asks me about the game, I pretend I don’t know what it is. I threw away all the League merchandise I bought, and deleted all the strategy manuals I downloaded. I stay miles away from anything to do with the game these days.

The reason I never want to be reminded of anything to do with this game again stems from a long ordeal I endured when I was sixteen. I was at home alone one evening, playing a game of League as usual.

To see how it works you can go and play the game yourself - it’s the most popular PC game in the world, though I would strongly advise against it if you want a life. For the purpose of conserving your time, I’ll only explain the necessary background knowledge to understand the story.

For those that aren’t familiar, League of Legends is a MOBA game which relies on skill, strategy and teamwork. Each player is called a ‘summoner’, who controls an in-game ‘champion’ with unique powers and abilities. Games are around half an hour long each, and you can pick a different champion each game. There are three lanes on a map called the ‘Summoner’s Rift’, and there are defensive turrets placed along each lane. There two opposing teams with five summoners on each team, usually randomly matched, and the objective of the game is to bring down the enemy’s turrets in order to destroy their base and claim victory.

If your champion is attacked, its health is lost. Your champion can die by losing all its health and that means you have to wait a certain amount of time before respawning. You can attack enemy champions and kill them so they can’t defend their turrets which gives you gold to buy items and make your champion stronger. You usually get gold from killing enemy minions, which are small bots that help their team attack turrets.

You can choose from a variety of champions to play each time you start a game. Some are more difficult to play than others, and each requires time to master properly. I was accustomed played champions known as ADCs, attack damage carries or marksmen – long range, consistent damage dealers usually starting with lower maximum health.

Because ADCs are especially vulnerable in early game with their low sustainability, it is usual to see them playing alongside a ‘support’ champion – one with low damage but useful abilities which can enhance the ADC’s attacks, heal (restore health) to champions around them, shield allied champions from enemy attacks, stun enemy champions so the ADC can do more damage and other helpful effects depending on the champion. In late game, an ADC champion can carry the team to victory, able to annihilate entire enemy teams in mere seconds.

Due to of lack of damage potential, people often find support champions boring to play. They are often blamed by ADCs and the rest of the team (stop take my farm! y u no heal me? killsteal n00b!!!111). However, a skilled support player was sought after by every ADC player, and I was no exception. I would always friend request good support players after games, and as a reliable ADC myself, they would usually accept.

That evening, I had just finished a victorious game which was completely turned around after an awful first half, in which a defeat seemed certain. I had never been more frustrated in my life. Our team was full of noobs, I had been AFK for about half an hour after disconnecting and when I returned I had terrible ping so all I could really do was try not to feed (die a lot of times). When I checked the end results, I was very surprised to see a support with 18 kills and 1 death while everyone else went about 2 kills to 5 deaths like me.

To my surprise, this support player friend requested me before I exited the game, and I hurriedly accepted. The username was just a string of seemingly random numbers. This is how our chat history went:

47829983749201: hi

Joshmillr: hey GG

47829983749201: BG y did u play shit

I’m usually a pretty civil guy – I played to have fun, not to cause drama. Usually if players were toxic I wouldn’t hesitate to unfriend and block. Although at this point I sensed a little toxicity, I thought it was just bants. We didn’t even know each other yet, and it was true my performance in the last game was shit.

Joshmillr: i was afk got bad ping

47829983749201: u look ok from match history

Players can check the results of other players’ previous game results on their profiles.

Joshmillr: im good usually

47829983749201: adc main?

Joshmillr: yeah i play lucian xayah ezreal mostly. ur a really good support tho

47829983749201: what is ur name

Joshmillr: josh. whats yours?

47829983749201: sofia

Joshmillr: u a girl?

47829983749201: yeah whats wrong with that

There were probably more guys pretending to be girls than there were real girls that played League. Perhaps it’s the toxic in-game chats or the over-sexualization of some female champion designs, but it’s been estimated only 10% of the League playerbase is female (though there may be more anonymous female players out there).

Joshmillr: nothing just asking

47829983749201: u think i must be bad cuz im a girl

Joshmillr: no i never said that its just i haven’t seen many girls on here

47829983749201: ugh why are they always like this

Joshmillr: well sorry meant no offense

Perhaps it was a mistake to ask, but all I could think at the time was goddamn triggered bitch. I closed the chat box, prepared to never talk to this girl again when I received an invite from her. Despite our first conversation making me feel pretty uncomfortable, I knew she was a good support player, so if she respected me enough to invite then what harm could it do? After checking my ping was decent, I entered her game. With our combined skill we scored an easy victory, with the enemy team surrendering in less than 15 minutes.

From there began an era of gaming success, consecutive wins that were rarely broken. As long as my connection was good and I kept focused, we were an unstoppable duo, plundering down all our adversaries like shovelling sand. She seemed to be online all the time, even more than me, which I found strange but convenient. I would never play without her and as long as we weren’t matched up with awful team members, we would win.

I never had such a competent partner in crime before in the game, so I wasn’t too bothered about anything she said to me, as long as she agreed to keep playing with me. However, it would be a lie to say I wasn’t peeved by her constant tutoring. For some reason, she felt the need to constantly remind me that I was the limiting factor in our duo.

After each game you can download and watch a replay of your game to analyse what you or any other player did throughout the game. It’s an incredibly useful learning tool, however it gets annoying if abused.

I gave her my WhatsApp number as it was easier to message outside of the game. At first, the game was all we talked about, and she didn’t seem eager to get to know me at all, so I dropped the efforts. Even after winning games, she would send me replay clips of when I missed skillshots or should’ve done something differently. It would always come with an unnecessary sarcastic remark. As much as I hated it, she was usually right, and accepting criticism is a key part of improving your gameplay. She did help me improve my technique, which was reflected in my performance. Perhaps that was just her personality, and I should be more thankful she’s willing to take the time, I thought back then.

After a while, we began to chat more. I found out she was fifteen and from France – she was also home-schooled because she got bullied as a kid, which was probably why she had so much free time, nearly all of which she spent playing League of Legends. She liked listening to heavy metal and screamo. Above all, she made it clear to me she ‘wasn’t normal’ and sent me her various psychologists' reports in French claiming she had bipolar disorder and anger issues. Sure I could tell she had problems, but she wasn’t as bad as some people I had seen before with those issues. She was funny and nice sometimes, when she was in a good mood. I thought I could help her with her issues if I talked to her more often.

She sent me a picture of herself cosplaying a support champion, Sona. If the girl in the photo was her, then she looked stunning. She had long wavy hair which she’d dyed blue and gorgeous blue eyes that seemed to glow. I considered the obvious possibility I was being catfished, but to be honest I didn’t care what she looked like that much as long as she was helping me secure those victories. Still, it felt good to think that there could be a babe behind that computer screen. Perhaps one day we could even meet. And do other things.

When we lost games, which was rare at first, she would get extremely pissed. Her reactions were so exaggerated that at first, even for someone with anger issues, I thought she had to be joking just to be funny or get her point across. She would curse at the other team members, search up and analyse their match history and watch replays of their mistakes over and over, texting me things like ‘WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS RETARDED NOOB DOING?’ at various points of the replay. These were usually randomly matched ally summoners we would never see again. It was rare to see anyone more obsessed with the game than I was, and I slowly began to discover that her infatuation with it was on a new level.

As you win more in League, games get harder. You get matched up with more experienced opponents and soon it’s difficult to keep your win streak up. The time eventually came when all this winning hit a plateau and we were both getting frustrated. She would sometimes take her anger out on me, which I endured out of fear that she thought I was inadequate. We were both addicted as hell, completely dependent on each other and constantly lacking sleep – it spiralled into a pretty toxic situation after a few weeks. However things really took a turn one evening.

We were in a game in which one member of the enemy team scored a Pentakill. I figured he must’ve been a smurfing pro player as nobody on our team was exceptionally bad, but it was just that he had incredible mastery. As all our dead champions lay scattered across Summoner’s Rift, chat exploded with accusations against our support Sona, the champion which Sofia was playing.

"if sona used w we wouldve killed their adc," someone typed in chat.

"why didnt you heal u werent on cooldown"

"idiot sona didnt ult"

"sona noob"

"478 hope ur mom get cancer"

I quickly chipped in, as I didn’t want things to get too ugly.

"shut up and play"

Once I resurrected, I kept on playing, with even sharper focus than before. The enemy team were pretty average in skill apart from this one guy, so I reckoned we had a chance of winning as long as we capitalised on his mistakes and focused. This made me more determined to play better, and fight it out till the end.

When I looked at the map after a while, I noticed Sona had resurrected, but was standing at base. She would occasionally shuffle around inside the base, but that was all. When I realised, I became furious. League doesn’t allow you to abandon a game, so you can’t do anything else apart from go AFK until it finishes. That’s exactly what she was doing, and this match was one we could win.

I tried to convince her to snap out of it, and even texted her on WhatsApp. She wouldn’t respond to anything, so I decided to play on without her. League was full of blame game and toxicity, so I honestly wondered how she had gotten so far if she was so easily triggered by it. The other members of our team were just as angry, and many began to send harassing messages. We were pretty quickly defeated and as soon as I exited the game, I entered a new one without her.

I was absolutely irate that she had ruined my game. Curse me, blame me, do whatever you want to me and I’ll tolerate – but go AFK on me, and it’s over. I felt betrayed and thought she was pathetic and so immature that she couldn’t even ignore a few rude remarks. Above all, I didn’t need a teammate who valued their own pride more than a team victory. If she was going to act like that, then it would probably damage my winrate more than it did good in future.

When she realised I had entered a game without her, she began texting me on WhatsApp. I read her first few messages.

“They made me cry again”

“this always happens to me”

“Why do I have to be so sensitive”

Her self pitying pissed me off, so I turned my phone on silent and kept playing. My results weren’t as good as when I played with her, but they were decent enough. In fact, even with the additional defeats, it felt liberating not to be dependent on her anymore. I realised how much I had sucked up to her over the past month or so, and vowed to develop my own skills and stand on my own two feet from then on. After a few games, I decided it was enough and went to sleep.

In the morning, I woke up to 100+ unread texts. I opened WhatsApp and to my horror, I was greeted with a string of gory images that almost made me vomit. I had just woken up, and was completely unprepared to be faced with such a sight. She had made multiple cuts on her arms with a knife and sent the pictures to me, deep cross-hatched lacerations. There were large brown stains of her excessive bloodshed on the carpet and bedsheets in the background. I scrolled to the top.

“Why are you ignoring”

“STOP IGNORING”

“SORRY”

“SORRY”

“SORRY”

“SORRY”

The images began after the pleas. She sent me pictures of the various cuts and bruises she had inflicted on her arms, legs and stomach. I thought it was likely my ignoring caused this mess, and instantly regretted it.

Sofia is typing…

“Morning”

I was afraid of what she might do next – I didn’t know what to say. Instead of texting, I voice called her. She declined the first few times, but I kept trying and she finally picked up.

“Sofia?”

“Hey.” Her voice was meek and quiet.

“Nice to talk to you Sofia. Listen, if this was my fault I’m so sorry. Please don’t take this game so seriously, I just want us to have fun. Doing this to yourself over what anyone says or does, even me, is really not worth it.” We were both silent for a while.

“I was crying all night. I thought you wouldn’t talk to me again.” She sounded as if she was choking.

“I was just angry at what you did, sorry for ignoring you. It won’t happen again.”

“I have more, but I won’t show them all to you.”

She sent me another image, this time of a phone screencap. There were more images of bloodied cuts in her skin which she had sent to another number.

“Who did you send these to?” I asked.

“That’s my other phone number.”

“Why are you sending the pictures there?”

“I want to see how they look when you receive them on WhatsApp. Sometimes they crop the picture.”

I was terrified at this point, and extremely concerned for her wellbeing. She was clearly incredibly self conscious and mentally fragile.

“Have you treated the cuts?”

“I put a bandage on them.”

“Get yourself to a hospital and get treatment for your self harm. They might get infected and you could get really ill. Seriously.”

“Why do you even care?” She suddenly sounded distraught.

“Because you’re my friend and you really scared me. It’s not about that damn game. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Ok, fine.” She hung up.

I wasn’t entirely convinced she would take my advice. That day at school, all I could think about was those bloody images, which had shaken me up badly. I had never seen wounds in such graphic detail, captured from every angle. The thick red stuff poured out of the stabs and tears in her arms, staining her furniture and splattered across the walls, clotted up in her carpet. On several occasions I would hear her screaming and crying in my head. Was it my fault?

When I returned home that day, the first thing I did was call Sofia. I asked if she had been to the hospital, and to my relief she said she had sought treatment. All she wanted to do now was play. For the first time in years, I wasn’t feeling in the mood to play at all, but I agreed if it would make her happy.

Neither of us were in great condition, and this was reflected in our game performance. We would lose, she would rage, and I could tell that each game was making her increasingly agitated.

“You’re not landing basic skillshots. Have you become dyspraxic?”

“Look at the fucking map noob!”

“Get out of bottom lane!”

“Where the hell is our motherfucking jungler?”

I told her to calm down and take a break, and when she refused, I logged off. She became incredibly angry and started to send me threatening texts, telling me she’d hack my account and send things to my friends. I decided that I had enough of this emotional abuse over a bloody game, and if she didn’t calm down in the morning, I would block her for good.

The next morning, I received more photos of cuts and bruises all over her limbs. My heart sank as another message came.

“They took it away.”

“Took what away?” I replied. She left me on read for a while, so I got worried and voice called.

“Who took what away?” I repeated, when she picked up.

“My parents. They came home from work yesterday and saw the blood stains.”

“Oh god…”

“They said the game was making me violent.”

“Didn’t you tell them you enjoyed it? That it was your escape?”

“No excuses, they said. I couldn’t do anything.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what to say.

“I have nothing. Nothing left.”

“Sofia, there’s more to life than that game.”

“That’s exactly what they said to me. You’re just like them. I played it to escape their abuse, to forget about all the bullies and the liars and the fake bitches.” I heard glass smashing in the background, as she screamed and pounded violently on something.

“I have a hammer!” Her voice was suddenly high pitched and calm, like an adult talking to a child. She began to laugh. The insane, choked giggles erupted into shrieks of scream-like yells.

“You know what I’m gonna do with a hammer! Break all of their trash like they broke me! I’ll break it…. I’LL BREAK IT YOU COCKSUCKERS!”

“Whatever you’re about to do, please don’t… Sofia! SOFIA –”

I heard the sharp sounds of glass and ceramics shattering in the background. She hung up. I immediately unfriended and blocked her on the game, then blocked her on WhatsApp. Enough was enough, and I did not want to hear from this crazy bitch again. I had an awful headache and I was shaking, so I took some aspirin and went to bed. Exceedingly frustrated perhaps, but in ignorance of the nightmare that would await me the following morning.

At 6.24 a.m. the next day, I received a WhatsApp message from a number I didn’t recognise. But I immediately knew who it was. I rolled my eyes in frustration, prepared to block and delete.

“Why did you abandon your support?”

“She was always there to help you”

“She never left you”

“She sacrificed herself for you”

“Do you hate her?”

One by one, the messages kept coming. My heart started to race, and beads of sweat formed upon my brow.

“You were supposed to protect each other”

“Help her when times got tough like she helped you”

“But it’s too late now Josh”

“Look what happens when you leave your support”

An image popped up. I had to press my hand against my mouth to stop myself from chucking up last night’s dinner all over the carpet.

It was a dark, grainy image, but there was no mistaking what it was showing. The blue haired girl I had seen in the photo some time ago was propped up against a wardrobe door, her head drooping to one side.

Her eyes had been gouged out of her skull and in their place were empty sockets. Her nose had been carved off and rested on her cheek like a plastic costume prop, the exposed flesh glimmering underneath. Blood had begun to clot in some areas, and in others, light reflected off the thick liquid, still shiny and oozing. There were lacerations all over her limbs, some old and others newly formed. The flesh of her left arm had been torn so severely that a section of bone in her upper arm had been exposed. Her dress was torn, revealing her exposed chest where she had been stabbed violently, multiple times.

My phone buzzed.

“No help. Sona is dead.”

I screamed. My parents came into the room and I broke down, telling them what happened.

They called the police and after an investigation they told us French authorities had already been informed. A fifteen year old girl in France had been detained after brutally murdering her younger sister. She had dressed her fourteen year old sister up in a wig and cosplay costume, then tortured and mutilated her body before stabbing her to death. She had no history of self-harm, but was known to have taken her anger out on household objects and other people.

After hearing their story, I remembered the bloody pictures of the torn flesh I had been sent. I finally vomited as they flashed through my mind, the screams accompanying them returning. I curled up in my bed, crying and shaking for an hour after removing all traces of League of Legends from my computer and deleting WhatsApp for good.

Those images flash up and plague my mind every time I’m alone in a dark place. These days, I turn away if I see anything to do with the game. I tell people not to use the abbreviation ‘lol’ when they send texts to me. I don’t play computer games, or go to gaming conventions. Nowadays, the only support I need is emotional.

And the only things I carry are objects.