League of Legends fans are blasting Riot Games after a “complete disaster” pro match ran for six hours due to technical difficulties.
In the League of Legends pro scene, many consider the Korean league to be among the most competitive, boasting some of the greatest in the game’s history. Aside from producing eight World Championship titles, the regional tourney is also home to Faker – who most LoL players consider the game’s GOAT player.
For this year’s season opener, all ten partnered teams face each other in a double round-robin format, with six teams qualifying for the playoffs. But beyond the challenges within Summoners’ Rift, it seems like LCK players need to face another hurdle as technical difficulties plague the tournament.
Most notably, the recent series between DRX and Dplus KIA reached an unbelievable six-hour mark after multiple tech pauses, with one tech pause being a dreary 40-minute long break.
LCK pro match frustrates players and fans amid “chronic ping issues”
The first match alone went incredibly overtime, as the game took over two hours to complete. While some expected the 40-minute break to cover most of the issues, the technical hurdles persisted and led to another two-hour match in Game 2.
The reason behind the extraordinary delay? Ping issues. Players from both teams reported to notice ping issues that caused the first tech pause. In a later announcement, LCK admitted to having “chronic ping issues” and chose to postpone the supposed next match between OKSavingsBank Brion and Kwangdong Freeks.
Clips of pro players in the match show players from both teams dozing off in boredom or frustration amid the long tech pause that lasted as long as an average match.
League of Legends fans took to social media to express their frustration on the other end of the broadcast. In the Reddit discussion thread for the DRX vs. DK face-off, a fan remarked that the match felt like a “horror game” as both players and fans are in the dark about if and when another tech pause will occur.
Some fans went as far as to suggest DDOS attacks as a reason behind the delay, although Riot Games and the LCK Organization are yet to affirm nor deny the root cause behind the ping spikes.
It appears that Riot Games’ professional competitions in South Korea have failed to resolve their persistent technical difficulties. Valorant’s recently concluded VCT Pacific Kickoff in Seoul was also delayed by five hours and had many tech stops owing to technical challenges.
As of this writing, tournament organizers are still resolving issues and have yet to release the updated schedule of LCK’s forthcoming matches.