Rough ride on the RIOT roller-coaster

It was a difficult weekend for RIOT. The start of their showpiece event had some major, major issues that plagued an otherwise great spectacle.

It seems like a lot of these problems could have been easily avoided with better planning, but many details remain unclear. The Zechs Files investigates what evidence we do have, and wonders how a company with so many esports veterans could have made so many oversights:

"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.

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."

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