On August 18, an important playoff match took place in League of Legends in South Korea. KT Rolster played against the former world champions Damwon Kia. Match 2 was actually balanced until a severe bug put DWG Kia on the winning path. E-sports fans in South Korea are now criticizing a decision by Riot Games.
What was this match like? In League of Legends, the playoffs have begun: It will be decided who becomes the champion in the regions and who goes to the Worlds.
In the Korean leagues, two strong teams faced each other in the quarter-finals on August 18:
- DAMWON Gaming (who sold their name to KIA) are the current vice-world champions. They even won the Worlds in 2020. The team has two of the best players in the world, Showmaker and Canyon, in the Midlane and Jungle. This year, Top-laner Nuguri is back, but he has lost his regular spot. They finished fourth in the league.
- They faced the fifth-place team of the LCK, KT Rolster, who have consistently been just behind the top teams in South Korea like T1, Gen G., and Damwon KIA for several years.
Player loses upgraded item when returning another
What was this bug? The bug occurred after about 30 minutes in Match 2 of the “Best of Three” competition. KT Rolster released a statement, which e-sports journalist Ashley Kang translated (via twitter):
We would like to issue a statement regarding the pause in Game 2:
The pause was requested when the ADC Aiming bought a Stopwatch on Kalista and then returned it, which reset the Ornn upgrade on Immortal Shieldbow.
So, a completely bizarre bug, but KT Rolster received a significant disadvantage from it:
- Top-laner Ornn upgraded an item of ADC Kalista with his special ability
- Kalista bought a Stopwatch and returned it
- As a result, the Ornn upgrade on the other item disappeared
This caused a disadvantage for the team. KT Rolster requested the pause in hopes that Riot Games would reset the game via Chronobreak, allowing them to continue playing before the bug occurred.
Ornn also appears in this spectacular LoL video:
How did Riot Games decide? Riot Games investigated the incident during a 42-minute pause but decided not to reset the game via Chronobreak, because the incident “was not recognized earlier”.
Team that suffered disadvantage from the bug lost the match and eventually the series
This is how it continued: The previously even game was decided in favor of DWG Kia.
DWG KIA took a 2-0 lead in the series, but KT Rolster managed to come back to 2-2, and a “Reverse-Sweep” was in the air. But once again, KT Rolster proved to be plagued by bad luck.
DWG KIA was able to win with a “Backdoor” play.
Ultimately, they even won the tight series 3-2. With that, KT Rolster was eliminated from the playoffs.
What else was noticeable? As noted by former Korean pro Wolf, who commented on the game in Korea, there was a second bug in the same game. Because of the bug, the ADC from KT Rolster was able to use his Flash even though he was supposedly charmed by Ahri.
This is the discussion: Some e-sports fans are upset about Riot Games’ decision in Korea. They believe it was a bug that affected the game: A reset of the game would have been appropriate here.
LoL had some problems with bizarre bugs in the summer of 2022:
LoL: Team is leading in pro match with 8,000 gold and 9-1 kills when a bug ruins the entire game
