Aside from the title that sounds like click bait, Riot has actually disabled Gangplank on all queues effectively killing him.
Act 3 of League of Legends’ Bilgewater event is underway. Miss Fortune is now Captain Fortune, the Undisputed Queen of the Pirate Underworld, Graves and Twisted Fate are caught in a bitter dispute, and Gangplank is dead. Yes. You read that right. Gangplank is dead. League’s most recently remodeled Champion–one of the game’s original 40 playable characters–has been deactivated for story reasons.
When you login to league you will see an alert at the top left section of the screen stating that Gangplank has been disabled on all queues. This is the first time that Riot has officially killed off a champion for the sake of lore and it is also the first time that they have reflected it with an in-game change.
Instead of the community being upset or lashing out for the most part they seem to be accepting the change. Several months ago Riot announced that they were going to be revamping League Of Legends’ lore in a way that more unique and refreshing for the players. The Bilgewater event has been incredibly successful; Riot has completely remodeled ARAM, added a new pirate-themed announced pack to all maps and added a new game mode (Black Market Brawlers), and written a fairly decent story as well. If you have not read or glanced at the Bilgewater chronicles it is something I recommend that you read.