An extended holiday break for Teamfight Tactics Set Eight has led to an abundance of bugs getting discovered without a patch to fix them, resulting in players worrying about having their accounts banned.
Bugs are bound to appear within TFT and players are likely going to win a game here and there off of a bug they didn’t know about. With Set Eight having a four-week period in between updates, many players have reached out to the devs over concerns about having their accounts banned because they won a game from a bug, according to designer Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer.
“A bug is something that doesn’t work as intended when playing normally,” Mortdog said. “An exploit is something that requires a specific set of deliberate actions that deviate from normal play with intention that results in unintended behaviors.”
At the launch of TFT Set Eight, there was a Gadgeteen bug where multiple items were created instead of just one at the start of combat. Players who abused this bug had their accounts banned, not because they played it once and won but because they ranked up the ladder by taking advantage of the bug repeatedly.
In the case of the Gadgeteen bug, only 40 accounts were banned, according to Mortdog. The low number of banned accounts emphasizes that the TFT community places competitive integrity over personal goals and rank. And the devs are happy about this, according to Mortdog.
The difference between playing a game with a bug and exploiting that bug isn’t as gray as players might think, although questionable circumstances are bound to take place where the issue needs more attention and possibly an investigation.
Players don’t have to worry about having their TFT account banned because of a bug as long as the bug was reported and they avoid it when playing future games until a fix is applied through an update. The next TFT Set Eight update is slated to take place on Jan. 11 through Patch 13.1.
