In games like League of Legends and Overwatch, a person’s rank can be seen as a status symbol. This has led some players to seek methods for increasing their rank outside of standard play, which has created a market for an entirely new service: boosting.

Boosting is when a skilled player logs into the account of a less experienced player and wins games for them. The number of games won, and total rank gained, is usually determined by the cost of the boost.

Becoming a full-time booster is now a way for some very special individuals to earn money, and players that have the talent to quickly increase the rank of others may seek to profit from it. For example, when asked why he boosts, competitive EUNE League of Legends player Chausa, eloquently said, “I can earn way more doing this then having a regular job.”

Being part of a larger boosting platform, or collective, can make it easier to manage to boost as well. “A few years ago, I used to just boost friends and could barely find work. Now that an organization finally picked me up, I just get matched up with players who need boosts,” Chausa said on this point. This mysterious organization gives him a seemingly endless supply of boosting requests.

Furthermore, he claims that he can focus on going to university while still being able to get some side income at the same time. If he is ever having a busy week, he can just stop taking requests for a while, and he suggested that he earned more than £850 a month boosting while “not even working that hard”.

But is boosting players really a viable job? Can it replace the more standard hourly wage jobs that many young adults partake in?

“If your good enough,” a well-known Overwatch player from the same organization commented anonymously. If you are not exceptionally talented at the game, this player claims, you have a low chance of being considered for a job as a booster. It might not even be enough to be a Top 500 player.

The reason for this is that you need to have the skills to win games in the lowest ranks. These lower levels are often characterized by a lack of team coordination. Sometimes, a rank boost is the only way out of these ranks. So boosters need to know how to truly carry a team at all levels of play. As such, even good players may find themselves unfit for the role.

“If you have what it takes, it can be a great source of money. But you better believe me when I say it can be frustrating,” the anonymous Overwatch player stated. “People usually want to rank up so that they can escape this Elo hell disaster. I live in it.”

The owner of this boosting platform also agreed that only certain players are qualified to be boosters, stating that if someone has the talent for it, it can be a reliable source of income.

They further elaborated on what may lead some players to become boosters:

In any other profession, if you’re in the top 0.00001% of people, you’re making bank. But for these players, their amazing skill set is a waste without boosting.

The owner claims that a lot of the boosters that come to him are players who didn’t make it to their dream of becoming pro in their respective video games. Esports can be an alluring career path for a lot of players, however, the number of people that get a chance at that is very low.

“Boosting gives talented players another chance,” the owner said. “It might not be a full occupation like being an esports professional, but at least it may give them the resources they need to get to the next step in their lives.”

On the surface, boosting seems to be a viable source of income for a few talented individuals. For some, however, there is still the problem of the morality of boosting.

The new 2019 League of Legends ranks.

Many players would agree that boosting has a negative impact on gameplay — imagine being in a game filled with average players, except one player is significantly better than the rest because a booster is really playing. This can lead to a lot of frustration.

However, from the boosters that I interviewed, most seem really grateful for the opportunity to make money doing what they enjoy, and many are generally putting their income to good use, such as paying for school. If most of the profits are going to gifted players who got left out of the esports scene, maybe boosting is not such a terrible thing.

One thing is for sure, the mysterious world of boosting is only going to grow as games get more and more competitive.