[2020] Riot is forcing me to change my name due to Coronavirus.

Hey all,

So I will try to keep this anonymous as possible, though it's quite hard given my current situation. I've been playing League of Legends for 6 years under the alias Squid Corona - squids are my favourite animal and Corona, believe it or not, is my real life surname.

As I'm sure everyone is well aware, there is a global pandemic called COVID-19 or, as very inconveniently for me, better known as Coronavirus. Trust me, I've heard all the jokes possible from friends and co-workers.

At the start of 2019 I managed to change my in-game name to just "Corona" as I thought the shorter version of my name was nicer, worked well with telling my real life friends to add me on League, as they all know it's my surname and I think Corona is a cool name so why not have just that. I had to use one of those third party sites to check the name and stay up till midnight in order to secure my family name in League (as a side note, Riot should really consider implementing a bot-detect system to stop name sniping).

I'm by most descriptions a casual player - I play one or two games a day of normal draft pick, almost always with friends just as a way of relaxing after work. On the 1st of April, I try to login to be greeted with a message telling me I need to change my name in order to proceed. I thought it was amusing at first, as almost every game a player would say in chat "nice name" to me, but I just shrugged my shoulders and emailed Riot in the hopes of them agreeing that it was a funny situation, and my name would be white-listed.

After two weeks of back and forth with multiple "Player Support Specialists", I was told that they had come to the conclusion that my name would not get white-listed and that I would have to change it if I wanted to keep playing League of Legends. This is specially stupid since in other regions, players with the name Corona are still active and playing.

This to me is all very disappointing. I haven't chosen the name "Corona" for any reason, and certainly haven't done it during the covid-19 outbreak. I feel like Riot are just sticking a big middle finger to me and telling me that my family name is inappropriate to be a part of their game. I'm posting this to reddit because I want to know if the community really feels offended by the summoner name "Corona", or if I'm right in feeling a mild rage and sense of unfairness.

EDIT: here's proof of communication: https://imgur.com/a/OE9l8sc Proof of ID has also been privately sent.