League of Legends champ jailed for drug trafficking

League of Legends Season 2 world champion Kurtis “Toyz” Lau has been sentenced to over four years in prison for drug trafficking

A former League of Legends world champion pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in Taiwan, landing the player a prison sentence of over four years on six charges.

As reported by Yahoo News Hong Kong and translated by Reddit user MatthewTheLord, Kurtis “Toyz” Lau was reportedly arrested in September of last year, after the police suspected he had been selling marijuana over the internet.

Police seized over 200 marijuana cigarettes during the investigation, and the Taichung District Prosecutor’s Office detected a second-level drug reaction in Lau’s hair.

League of Legends tournaments have huge prize pools, with some such as Worlds offering millions of dollars to winners. Photo: JOSH EDELSON / AFP

The report says that Lau had been prosecuted on four counts of second-degree drug trafficking and two counts of attempted drug trafficking.

His defence lawyer claimed that Lau was from Hong Kong, and thus not familiar with Taiwan’s laws, pleading with the court to hand down a lighter sentence. Lau was subsequently sentenced to four years and two months in prison.

Kurtis “Toyz” Lau rose to prominence in the second season of League of Legends’ second championship season back in 2012. His team, the Taipei Assassins, had a meteoric rise through the Taiwanese Regional Finals to qualify for Worlds, and then won in a 2-1 victory against Azubu Frost in the World Championship finals.

League of Legends players are usually referred to by their in-game handles, such as Kurtis Lau’s “Toyz”. Photo: Riot Games

Lau later retired from playing, instead going on to coach Taiwanese esports team G-Rex in 2018 and 2019. He was awarded the “Coach of the Split” award for his coaching in the LMS Spring 2018 tournament.

League of Legends developer Riot Games recently announced they’d teamed up with Ubisoft for the “Zero Harm” project, which aims to leverage both companies’ experiences with online gaming to cut down on abuse and toxicity. The companies say they’ll be “laying the technological foundations” to allow any company to use AI to reduce negativity, abuse, and toxic behaviour coming from players in online games.

Despite this, the company has come under fire, after it was revealed that a new League of Legends LGBT character would be censored in some regions.

Executive Producer at Riot Games Jeremy Lee said that the new character K’Sante, who is the game’s first gay Black champion, may be censored to “fit into the local culture”, referring to countries where there are restrictions on the depiction of LGBT+ people.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.