Riot Games starts deleting old League of Legends Accounts this month

League of Legends is one of the oldest games in esports, having been around since 2009. In that time, the game has become hugely popular with more than 150 million accounts. While most games like to brag when they hit certain levels of account numbers, Riot is going a different way soon as they’re starting to delete old League of Legends accounts.

Riot announced they’re starting to remove inactive players from League of Legends and clearing house. However, there’s a good reason behind it. Older and lesser-user Riot accounts in the game will be removed permanently. Although, only those that probably won’t be missed.

This is how it’s going to work.

Riot Deleting League of Legends Accounts

Riot will be starting with all of the inactive accounts in all of their games, not just League. As one of the oldest and biggest though, League is Legends is likely to take one of the biggest hits to accounts numbers.

This won’t just be blind selection though! No one has to worry about their active account getting kicked out of the game. Riot will be using a specific criterion to figure out if an account is going to be missed or not.

Criteria for Deleting League of Legends Account

The criteria for deleting League of Legends accounts is as follows:

• The account is inactive, i.e not actively being logged into and played.
• It has never purchased any currency.
• The account has never been given any currency.
• It has played for fewer than 20 hours.
• The account doesn’t have any limited-edition content in the game.

This criteria for how accounts are deleted should make sure that it is just older and truly inactive accounts that are being removed from the game. Mainly, if your time spent on LoL is more then 20 hours, you are safe. While the conditions mean no big players are going. Anyone who has in-game currency or potential valuable items won’t lose them. Even if they’re inactive. The limits on play times will also make sure anyone who actually plays the game keeps their account

If you have an account that meets this criteria for whatever reason, you have a chance to save it too. Players will receive an email that warns them of the deletion. While it will be removed if not addressed, players get notice. This will give them the chance to log back in and make sure the account isn’t deleted.

Why are Riot Accounts are being deleted?

The move on deleting League of Legends accounts is part of their official move to 2-factor authentication. This will make sure that all accounts are more secure, and also to release plenty of account names from the system. However, this will also help keep their information safe from those looking to steal accounts or misuse data. Riot deleting League of Legends accounts seems to be to eliminate accounts that won’t be able to upgrade to a more secure system. Inactive players won’t set-up 2FA.

This is probably going to mean that the game’s account numbers take a bit of a dip. It’ll no longer have forgotten or smurf accounts taking up space. However, it’ll still be a good measure of how many people are actually playing the game. We’ll also still have active player counts to look at see how many LoL fans are out there too.