Riot Games Suspends Two League of Legends Coaches Due To Abuse Claims

Riot Game's decision to suspend Ceros and Kazu comes following a thorough one-month investigation into Haruki "tol2'" Shibata claims that the coaches were abusive to him, which led tol2 to leave DetonatioN FocusMe gaming house in July.

Tol2 shared his experience on social media in July, which led Riot Games to conduct an investigation led by the League of Legends Japan League (LJL). During the investigation, the LJL interviewed 11 people, including the two coaches and tol2 and examined recordings submitted by various parties.

The LJL found out that Ceros and Kazu have engaged in behaviour which can be perceived as harassment, which resulted in Riot Games suspending the two coaches for six months. As a part of the suspension, Kazu and Ceros are prohibited from being involved in any Riot Games LoL esports tournaments until February 2024.

While Kazu and Ceros have only now received the suspension, Detonation FocusMe fired the two coaches shortly after tol2 made the harassment claims. The team has since found a replacement coach in Han "viviD" Gi-hun, who joined the Japanese LoL esports team on August 10.

However, despite firing Ceros and Kazu, DetonatioN FocusMe got fined 2 million JPY ($13.690) and needs to improve the company's anti-harassment measures. As a part of the punishment for the Japanese team, CEO Nobuyuki Umezaki has to attend a harassment training course.

In the statement issued by DetonatioN FocusMe, the team revealed that tol2's contract with the team was terminated following an agreement between the player's lawyers and the organisation. While an unfortunate ending to the incident, tol2's departure won't affect the team too much.

Tol2 has not been playing with DetonationFocusMe since the scandal broke out. To fill in the gap, DFM moved its starting ADC  Yuta "Yutapon" Sugiura, to the top lane and promoted academy ADC Ryo "Milan" Nakamoto to the main lineup.

Even though DetonatioN FocusMe found a solution for tol2's departure, the team now needs to pay an additional fine of 1.5 million JPY ($10,250) for making a roster change past the June 24 deadline.

Regardless of all the scandals and issues DFM have been dealing with, the Japanese LoL esports squad has made it to the LJL 2023 Summer Playoffs finals, where they'll face off against SoftBank HAWKS. 

The grand final is set to take place on Sunday, August 20, when the two Japanese teams will clash in a best-of-five series to determine who will represent the region at the LoL World Championship 2023.