Players in Teamfight Tactics thought they’d broken the Set 11 Inkborn Fables code through swap scripts. But when gameplay was shown on Twitter/X, game design director Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer wasn’t impressed.
Skill matters within TFT, much like Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and other card games. There’s always RNG involved, but the best players in the world know how to adapt and play flexibly, earning the highest possible lobby placement across hundreds and even thousands of games. A Twitter user posted gameplay footage of another player cheating on June 9, in which the Tactician was using a swap script to reposition before the next player combat round began.
Frodan discovered the post and shared it on his Twitter timeline, which made it to Mortdog’s stream before the 14.12 Patch Rundown notes. The game director immediately shut down the option of using swap scripts, calling it “a quick way to get account banned” and said the scripts are “easy to detect.”
Swap scripts are clearly against Riot’s rules, whether they’re used in an organized competitive event or casually playing the upcoming Pengu’s Party mode. No player repositions champions in the manner shown in the Twitter video, and even if they physically could, it’s a waste of time where a misclick could cost you a game or a top-four finish.
Repositioning is a skill set within TFT that’s hard to master, which is why so many players, myself included, get stuck in the Emerald rank. Knowing how a champion uses their spell and ability and what Hexes or champions are targeted through it requires hours of studying and gameplay. Using a swap script potentially increases a player’s rank higher than their actual skill level, and Riot isn’t going to tolerate it within the game.
Update June 10 3:45pm CT: Riot anti-cheat manager Matthew “Riot Packman” Paoletti responded to Frodan’s post from yesterday: “To be clear, this is against ToS – we’ve started handing out two-week bans for this tool (and will for other tools like it), which will escalate to permanent bans for continued usage on the same account.”
