Garena's Liên Quân Mobile council updated its penalty framework for invalid character names and avatars, effective January 1, 2026: the system now auto-corrects the flagged name and locks the rename feature for anywhere from 1 day to 3 years. The 12-character name limit itself hasn't moved — the stakes around getting it wrong just did.
Garena's Liên Quân Mobile council published an update titled "Cập nhật các hành vi bị xử phạt và thời hạn khóa" (Update to Penalized Behaviors and Lock Durations), effective January 1, 2026. It revises how the game handles accounts using an invalid character name or avatar: rather than leaving the account as-is until reported, the system now auto-corrects the name or avatar and locks the rename / profile-info-change feature for a period that scales from 1 day up to 3 years, based on how severe the violation is and whether the account has a history of repeat offenses.
This is a different event from Garena's better-known March 2024 enforcement notice, which was a one-time mass-rename wave against accounts already using invalid names at that moment. This update changes the standing penalty framework itself — the consequence that now applies any time a name or avatar gets flagged, going forward.
It's easy to conflate "the name got stricter" with "the penalty got stricter" — this update is entirely the second one:
| Rule | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Name length limit | Unchanged | 12 characters, weighted count, no plain spaces |
| Allowed decorative symbols | Unchanged | Symbols count normally (not double), same as before |
| Consequence for an invalid name/avatar | 🆕 New (Jan 1, 2026) | Auto-corrected by the system; rename feature locked 1 day–3 years by severity/repeat offense |
The name-field rules our checker is calibrated against didn't move. What moved is what happens after the fact if a name violates Garena's content policy — a real-money and real-time cost that wasn't previously this explicit.
Our Liên Quân character tool's live checker is built around the 12-character limit, and this update doesn't ask us to change that math. What it does raise is the cost of a name that crosses from "decorative" into "policy-violating" — under the old enforcement, that mostly meant a one-time correction; now it can mean losing the ability to rename at all for up to three years. That makes testing a name before committing to it more valuable, not less, especially for names built from symbol combinations that could plausibly be misread as something the filter flags.
We track this rule on our Vietnamese-language Kí Tự Đặc Biệt Liên Quân page, which includes a live 12-character checker calibrated to Liên Quân's existing name rules — the primary audience for this specific game. For the general mobile-game version of "why was my name rejected," including Free Fire, PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends, see our English why was my game name rejected answer.
Garena's own Liên Quân Mobile announcement page is the primary source for this update, and it blocks automated fetching — the same access pattern several other first-party gaming portals show (Riot, Roblox, and Epic's own help pages behave the same way). We've corroborated the content of the announcement through Garena's own site listing and indexed search results rather than a single unverifiable claim, but we haven't been able to confirm the exact severity tiers (which specific behaviors map to which lock duration) beyond the 1-day-to-3-year range Garena states. If a clearer public breakdown of those tiers surfaces, or if this framework changes again, we'll update this entry.
Our Vietnamese Liên Quân page includes a live checker calibrated to the 12-character limit.
Open Kí Tự Đặc Biệt Liên Quân →Per Garena's official Liên Quân Mobile announcement, "Cập nhật các hành vi bị xử phạt và thời hạn khóa từ 1/1/2026" (Vietnamese-language; the page blocks automated fetching, so this citation is corroborated via Garena's own site listing and indexed search results rather than a full page render).