Evidence of cheating? Not according to RIOT
Defending champion FoV
Esports has had its dark days. For those who have been around long enough to remember the Cyber X Games, RIOT’s troubles at this weekend’s world championship are like water off a duck’s back. We’ve been here before – the unreliability of a sport based on the internet has been a common theme ever since people first thought about watching other people play computer games.
Tournaments have had, and probably always will have their hiccups. From minor five minute delays to tropical storms taking out an entire stream, esports has seen pretty much everything short of Godzilla stomping a broadcast truck. Cancellations and really huge delays are rarer nowadays after leagues learned and adapted from bitter experience, but it still happens to the best of them. When ESL cancelled IEM China it was because the game fair they were attached to got shutdown – a risk of the ESL model, but not really their fault.
But the League of Legends season two finals didn’t get hit by an earthquake and it wasn’t closed because of international disputes. It was shut down and postponed due to hardware issues. You might say that this can happen to anyone, and you’re sort of right, but RIOT aren’t newcomers to this. League might be a comparatively new game, but the company behind it has years of esports experience. When I tried to email Marc Marcou recently, I found that I still had his old CAL email from his CS 1.6 admin days - like I said, these guys are not beginners.
So it’s somewhat surprising, then, that they could be struck down by one of esports’ oldest nemeses – technical problems. Tasteless famously refers to them as esports version of bad weather, but if Wimbledon can close its roof, why can’t RIOT come prepared? The fact that they've kept quiet about the specifics doesn't really help the matter: we don't know if it was a simple, avoidable problem or a huge unpredictable issue. Their lack of transparency hasn't really helped their cause - a single post on the main League page that simply labels it as "connectivity issues" doesn't really count.
You’d expect a company with so many veterans to have made sure that the hardware was set, tested and ready to go, especially for an event that should have been one of the biggest in esports history. The S2WC promised so much – huge prizes, amazing games, and the best players from around the world. With so much at stake, you’d hope RIOT made absolutely positively sure of every detail, wouldn’t you? What makes this even more galling for them, I’m sure, is that the recent The International 2 went off without a hitch, and was heralded by many as the greatest esports event in history.
On the bright side, the games have been great and the prize is at least still up for grabs (check out CXG if you wonder why this is worth mentioning) but the delivery has been sorely lacking. You can argue that the technical problems were not entirely RIOT’s fault, but there is more. Allowing players to cheat by watching the big screen is an enormous oversight. There is a reason that sound-proof booths are standard for most major events nowadays and apparently it’s more than just “they look kinda cool.” I'm not convinced whether or not the teams did cheat, but the possibility undermines the whole purpose of having offline events in the first place and reflects poorly on RIOT.
I’m not going to go as far as some comments that claim that this is a huge setback for esports. It isn’t. We’ve had plenty of these before and pulled through. It is the darkest day in RIOT’s history, however, that much is certain. They messed up badly in front of esports’ largest ever audience but the fact remains that they had such a huge audience to begin with. DotA fanboys will lap it up, reddit will eventually calm down and RIOT will hopefully learn from their mistakes for the future. As Spiderman says to Peter in that famous Family Guy episode, “everybody gets one.”
Tournaments have had, and probably always will have their hiccups. From minor five minute delays to tropical storms taking out an entire stream, esports has seen pretty much everything short of Godzilla stomping a broadcast truck. Cancellations and really huge delays are rarer nowadays after leagues learned and adapted from bitter experience, but it still happens to the best of them. When ESL cancelled IEM China it was because the game fair they were attached to got shutdown – a risk of the ESL model, but not really their fault.
But the League of Legends season two finals didn’t get hit by an earthquake and it wasn’t closed because of international disputes. It was shut down and postponed due to hardware issues. You might say that this can happen to anyone, and you’re sort of right, but RIOT aren’t newcomers to this. League might be a comparatively new game, but the company behind it has years of esports experience. When I tried to email Marc Marcou recently, I found that I still had his old CAL email from his CS 1.6 admin days - like I said, these guys are not beginners.
So it’s somewhat surprising, then, that they could be struck down by one of esports’ oldest nemeses – technical problems. Tasteless famously refers to them as esports version of bad weather, but if Wimbledon can close its roof, why can’t RIOT come prepared? The fact that they've kept quiet about the specifics doesn't really help the matter: we don't know if it was a simple, avoidable problem or a huge unpredictable issue. Their lack of transparency hasn't really helped their cause - a single post on the main League page that simply labels it as "connectivity issues" doesn't really count.
You’d expect a company with so many veterans to have made sure that the hardware was set, tested and ready to go, especially for an event that should have been one of the biggest in esports history. The S2WC promised so much – huge prizes, amazing games, and the best players from around the world. With so much at stake, you’d hope RIOT made absolutely positively sure of every detail, wouldn’t you? What makes this even more galling for them, I’m sure, is that the recent The International 2 went off without a hitch, and was heralded by many as the greatest esports event in history.
On the bright side, the games have been great and the prize is at least still up for grabs (check out CXG if you wonder why this is worth mentioning) but the delivery has been sorely lacking. You can argue that the technical problems were not entirely RIOT’s fault, but there is more. Allowing players to cheat by watching the big screen is an enormous oversight. There is a reason that sound-proof booths are standard for most major events nowadays and apparently it’s more than just “they look kinda cool.” I'm not convinced whether or not the teams did cheat, but the possibility undermines the whole purpose of having offline events in the first place and reflects poorly on RIOT.
I’m not going to go as far as some comments that claim that this is a huge setback for esports. It isn’t. We’ve had plenty of these before and pulled through. It is the darkest day in RIOT’s history, however, that much is certain. They messed up badly in front of esports’ largest ever audience but the fact remains that they had such a huge audience to begin with. DotA fanboys will lap it up, reddit will eventually calm down and RIOT will hopefully learn from their mistakes for the future. As Spiderman says to Peter in that famous Family Guy episode, “everybody gets one.”
