Phreak quits social media due to death threats over League ping system comments

David ‘Phreak’ Turley, a League of Legends caster turned Riot Games Game Designer, has said that he is taking a hiatus from social media following death threats from fans due to his comments on the ping system changes.

The change to the ping system in League of Legends has been nothing but controversial. Fans were furious at the initial announcement of changes, and many have voiced their issues with the changes.

Riot said in its initial announcement about the changes that it is due to player toxicity, and that it shouldn’t impact in-game communication all that much.

That sentiment was echoed by former League caster Phreak, who works at Riot as a Game Designer. The former esports personality puts out long breakdowns of every patch that comes to the game, and commented on the ping system changes when reading over them in the notes last week.

He explained that from Riot’s polling, the changes have been positive. However, most fans grabbed onto a comment he made about how players can just type what they need to say in chat instead of pinging. He later apologized for the comment on the League of Legends subreddit.

Riot Phreak quits social media following backlash

After the community became enraged at his comment, Phreak said in his most recent patch breakdown that he is quitting social media for an indefinite amount of time.

“The amount of toxicity has risen so sharply that it’s not worth me seeing the occasional troll comment amidst all the death threats. So it is what it is,” he said at 1:38 minutes into the video.

The League community seems sympathetic toward Phreak to an extent, based on some of the top comments on the post about his social media hiatus on the subreddit.

“Pretty cringe of people to unironically send death threats even tho the changes to communication have been awful It’s ok to poke fun at Phreak for his ego but don’t wish death upon him that’s f***ed,” one commenter said.

However, other comments seem to revel in getting him to quit social media over the controversial change to the communication system in the game.

“Kind of funny how everyone is just buying into this as if it isn’t a blatant attempt at taking heat off of him for his consistent and vocal incompetence. Anyway, good riddance the less I have to hear from rioters the better,” one user said.