After many players reported games were lagging at the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational, Riot Games announced late night on Thursday that they found discrepancies in latency and have adjusted the infrastructure for the remaining matches at the tournament. However, in the same announcement, Riot ruled that Royal Never Give Up must replay their first three games of the group stage.
A Message from Alex François, Global Head of Competitive Operations, Riot Gameshttps://t.co/YIe1r2vx0c pic.twitter.com/ynVyw0wuPn
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) May 13, 2022
Due to an outbreak of COVID-19, China is facing strict lockdowns. As a result, RNG have been forced to play from their home facility in Shanghai, China. To create an even playing field, Riot Games decided to make the teams competing from the MSI 2022 venue in Busan, South Korea play on artificial ping to match what RNG experienced from China.
The latency was stated to be a stable 35ms ping, but further investigation revealed that wasn’t the case. Since every team in Busan experienced the same latency, matches between teams both present in person will not be replayed. However, since RNG had the opportunity to play with less ping than they should have, their MSI 2022 opponents will have another chance to defeat them. RNG defeated all three of the teams in their group, putting them at a 3-0 before their wins were wiped away.
The official announcement stated these replacement games will be played “beginning tomorrow,” according to Alex Francois, the global head of competitive operations at Riot Games. He also said Riot will continue to “monitor the playing environments in our commitment to maintaining the tournament’s competitive integrity.”
With that said, RNG will have to play against PSG Talon, fastPay Wildcats and RED Canids one more time on top of their scheduled second half of the double round robin. This means RNG must play six more games while the rest of the group’s teams will play four.
RNG’s group is set to play the second half of their Group B round-robin on Friday. All games are set to be completed by the end of the group stage, which concludes on Sunday.
