A League of Legends player who claimed to have built a career around boosting accounts and selling them replied angrily on social media to a developer at Riot Games. He was worried about how he would make money now. The dev’s response was a link to McDonalds’ careers page.
On August 11, Riot Games announced plans to ramp up its efforts to fight back against smurf and alt account misuse in League of Legends, one of the biggest MOBAs on the planet. These new plans include banning and punishing people who grind on accounts owned by other players, boosting their rank in the process, and charging a fee for doing so. These services have become quite common online. Even Elon Musk admitted to using one such service in Path of Exile II. But Riot is cracking down and banning accounts associated with the practice. These changes will begin in LoL update 25.18 and will likely lead to players being far more cautious about paying others to boost their rank in League of Legends. That will lead to fewer customers for those offering such “services,” and one of these people wasn’t happy about that news.
On Monday, Twitter user SLS replied to Riot’s Director of Product Drew Levin, and explained that their “main income” comes primarily from boosting other players’ accounts in League of Legends. They also coach players in the free-to-play MOBA, but admitted that this only earned them about 15 percent of what they make boosting in a month. They wrapped up their comment with: “What I do after? [sic] Just chill at McDonald’s?” Levin reshared the post and included a link to McDonald’s careers page, seemingly joking that it was time for SLS to find a new job.
https://t.co/Ku080U0fB4 https://t.co/7JgyjgOpJF
— Drew Levin (@drewlevin) August 11, 2025
“Bro, you do understand that you have built a business off of ruining other people’s games, right?” replied Levin. “[I] have no desire to preserve that at the expense of whatever lobbies you’re boosting accounts through.”
When SLS replied to that message with a complaint that the boosting industry wasn’t hurting the game and that boosters take specific orders related to very high ranks, Levin replied again, this time pointing out how absurd it was that SLS was describing breaking how the game ranks players as an “industry.”
“‘The industry?’ ‘Taking orders?’ Bro you are paid to trick our skill evaluation systems, and you are talking to the person leading the effort to improve their integrity,” said Levin on social media.
Kotaku has reached out to Riot Games about the response.
While some players who relied on boosting or liked smurfing–which is when a high-level player creates a new account to use their skills against low-level players–were upset about the changes, the vast majority of the replies to Levin were happy to hear Riot Games was taking alt account abuse seriously in 2025. Of course, it remains to be seen if Riot Games can actually weed out all the boosters and smurf accounts from League of Legends and how quickly people find ways around their new efforts.
Also, it should be noted that working at McDonald’s, like any other fast food joint, is a very hard job that requires incredible amounts of patience and stamina. It would be nice if we could all stop acting like people who work at these places are lazy teens working a summer job for beer money or whatever. If that cultural shift were to happen, perhaps they’d have a better shot at getting paid more. And don’t you think the people making your food deserve more money? I do.
