Videogame Confessions: How I Lost a Gift from a League of Legends Rioter

As my wife and I have mentioned throughout many articles, we've been playing League of Legends for over a decade now. Throughout the years, we've had the fortune of having many friends; among them was a Rioter with whom we got along very well.

For those who don't know, a Rioter is an employee, and you can sometimes find them in random matches. While most of them don't really chat and/or add players, this guy was genuinely a very nice person who was interested in finding a group to queue with.

Unfortunately, our friendship fizzled out due to my wife and me not logging in a lot during that period (and possibly too many name changes leading to confusion), but we played with him enough that we became pretty chummy.

Before that happened, he told us he wanted to gift us something: it turns out that Rioters have the ability to give players something special: a ward with a Riot logo on it.

At the time, League of Legends hadn't introduced username tags, but I've always liked clean and easy-to-read ones. To remedy the unavailability of unique ones, I began cheekily changing upper case I for lower case Ls, and back then, I was donning "unremarkabIe"... or, rather, "unremarkabie".

Of course, my Rioter friend didn't know this... so the gift went to the actual account named unremarkable.

The misunderstanding could've easily been resolved by explaining the situation when I found out, but... well, social anxiety strikes another victim down! Half-jokes aside, whilst I've never been great at not stumbling over myself when with others, my main concern was that he might assume that I was only his friend because he was a Rioter.

It’s been about two years now, and he’s still on our Friend List. We haven’t played together because I don’t think he remembers us anymore at this point (and also because he’s obsessed with Valorant)… and, no, I will not DM him about it. 

So, kids, adults, and older people... whether this article made you cringe or giggle, I just want you to take one lesson with you: never use Is for Ls in your usernames. Or… I guess maybe you could be boring and trust your friends know you love them for them.