Riot clarifies Trainwreck's Valorant ban: "This wasn't just a five-stack with friends on their own accounts"

Riot Games has responded to the Valorant ban it recently handed to Kick co-founder and streamer 'Trainwreck,' real name Tyler Faraz Nikam, stating that it was the result of teaming up with an Immortal player who was swapping between smurf accounts. The month-long suspension has sparked fresh discussions around what's allowed in Valorant five-stacks, with Trainwreck questioning why he was "banned for playing with friends." In response, Riot's anti-cheat team has clarified that one specific player that was joining Trainwreck in the multiplayer game caused a direct ToS violation.

Over the weekend, Trainwreck was handed a 31-day ban from Valorant by Riot Games, following a session where he teamed up with several other streamers, including former pro player Jay 'Sinatraa' Won and coach Michael 'Dapr' Gulino. "I'm queuing with streamers on their streams," Trainwreck said in response to the decision, "I'm getting banned because I'm not performing well enough?" He acknowledges that his teammates were of higher rank than him. "Of course I'm carried, no one's denying that I'm carried, the world knows I'm carried, no-one has a problem with it. It's a targeted ban, 100%."

The Valorant competitive guidelines note that "full parties of five are allowed with no ranked restrictions," but several members of the anti-cheat team say it wasn't Trainwreck's pro-level friends that were the problem. Riot's Matt 'K3o' Paoletti explains that the "root cause" for the ban was one specific player that was involved in the stream, who was swapping between several lower-ranked accounts. He adds that the person in question "had infracted many times in our ecosystem," and that they have been handed a hardware ban as a result.

Riot's Mohamed 'GamerDoc' Al-Sharifi adds more detail via X. "This wasn't just a five-stack with friends on their own accounts. An Immortal player (with prior boosting bans on their main) was swapping between multiple lower-rank smurfs/shared accounts they did not own. That group ran a roughly 80% win rate across roughly 50 games."

GamerDoc notes that this "directly violates" the Riot Games terms of service, specifically part 15a of the section regarding "examples of behavior that warrant disciplinary measures." This refers to "playing on another person's account or otherwise engaging in activity intended to 'boost' an account's status or rank." He adds, "five-stacking is completely fine if everyone is on accounts they personally own and hand-leveled."

GamerDoc also addresses a Discord message of his, which was publicly shared by Kick streamer Félix 'xQc' Lengyel. In it, he wrote, "My guy Trainwrecks was getting carried every game. There was nothing fun about it, the MMR stack is all low. The guy playing on an account he doesn't know and Trainwrecks underperforming does not help his case. Neither will the ban be reverted. There is nothing 'fun here.'" GamerDoc notes on X that the "account he doesn't know" part was a typo, and should have read "doesn't own."

Riot's head of anti-cheat Phillip Koskinas then also responded to this Discord screenshot. "[GamerDoc's] tone was terrible by the end of this convo, but that typo is supposed to read 'on an account he doesn't own,' referring to all the borrowed smurf accounts the highest-ranked party member was swapping through to sandbag their ratings for matchmaking."

Trainwreck replies, "You keep disingenuously misrepresenting what happened to justify the unfair and harsh punishment for something out of my control. I was playing with friends live on stream, 95% of the players in all my stacks were on their main accounts. For the ones that weren't, how can I know that it wasn't an account they leveled up on their own?" During his stream, he queried why he wasn't privately warned of the potential infringement by Riot staff prior to the ban.

Koskinas explains that the ToS violation in this case wasn't an issue with an over-ranked account, but the under-ranked ones being used by the repeat offender. "One of those players was borrowing accounts to be rated low enough to queue with you, and then dominating the now lower-rated opponents for the vast majority of your ranked gain. They do this often, so it wasn't an accident."

GamerDoc ends by sharing a final post of his own from one year ago, in May 2025. It reads, "We are seeing five stacks queue up with one higher-ranked account and multiple lower-ranked shared accounts to manipulate matchmaking for easier wins. Manipulating matchmaking this way will result in a suspension and HWID ban for all accounts engaging in the behavior. We have started bans and will continue banning when we see this kind of abuse on the ladder."