Tatu benched for external communication during Champion Select

FURIA’s 20-year old jungler is one of the rising stars of the CBLOL, and last split, its champion. But this split, for FURIA’s next series, against Vivo Keyd Stars, he’ll be stuck on the bench. This is the result of an official Riot Games ruling after a rule violation by Tatu on stage against LØS. During the Champion Select, Tatu opened up his in-client LoL chat to message an external player about his champion’s build. His act was clearly caught on camera, and resulted in a prompt response by Riot.

This response came four days after the LØS series in the form of an official statement from the CBLOL account, outlining the rules violation, the process of notifying FURIA, and the one-series suspension, while emphasizing the gravity of the situation. Riot’s statement also described FURIA’s need to field an emergency replacement, with Riot permitting them to register one for the VKS series by July 30th.

According to Tatu’s response statement, they already have one in mind. His quote of the post reiterates the mistake he made, assures he understands and it won’t happen again, and indicates that the team would probably be playing with Coach Lucas “Luuukz” Higashi filling in for Tatu in the jungle position.

Luukz does have some competitive jungle experience, including time spent in 2022 in CBLOL Academy on RED Canids’ academy roster. With Luuukz’s somewhat limited history jungling, and his likely stepping in, it could mean trouble for FURIA’s chances against VKS, after already losing to LØS to start the split. The threat of a potential 0-2 record, with part of that drawing from an unforced error in Champion Select, certainly may prove detrimental to FURIA’s split.

Tatu is also being fined a significant amount for this mistake. This is reportedly a 10,000 Brazilian Real fine, which is about 1.9 thousand US Dollars, or 1.7 thousand Euros. With his paying this fine and his sitting out during the one-series suspension for the duration of the FURIA-VKS match, Tatu should be free to return thereafter and play as FURIA’s jungler for the remainder of the split, including the following week’s matches versus LOUD and Fluxo W7M. FURIA’s many fans, hopeful for Worlds after a tough MSI, will hope the rest of the split involves no chat-based mistakes, or anything else that could hamper practice for Worlds, or threaten to prevent eventual qualification.