ESL announced in a reddit post today that IEM will not be hosting League of Legends for the forseeable future.
Well-known public face of ESL, Michal "carmac" Blicharz announced in a reddit post today that ESL will no longer be running League of Legends tournament as part of Intel Extreme masters. Blicharz cited scheduling conflicts with RIOT as the main reason for the change.
"During the off season Western players are being traded or are on vacation while Korea and China are running tournaments with their teams locked in," he wrote. "Working around those limitations didn't seem like the right way to move forward." However, he did add that if scheduling issues subside there is the possiblity of further League tournaments in future.
Blicharz admitted that ESL has had issues with IEM events in the past and offered an apology to fans on reddit. He also said that he will be donating his annual bonus to a Polish children's cancer charity by way of an apology for issues at IEM Katowive earlier this year.
Looking forward, he was asked on reddit about replacement titles, to which he replied only "we're in conversations about it internally." Several posters enquired about DOTA2 as a replacement but Carmac remained tight-lipped on the subject.
The final League of Legends event was IEM Katowice, which took place in February this year. LMS team Flash Wolves took home first place, beating G2 in the final, 2-0. The event was plagued with delays and technical issues and came under heavy criticism from fans at the time.
Despite the frustration at the most recent event, IEM events gone by brought us some of League of Legends' most iconic moments. Probably most memorable of all was Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martínez' famous "backdoor" play against SK Gaming, captured below.
With IEM no longer running League of Legends tournaments, events not run directly by RIOT are almost entirely extinct. IEM was one of the last remaining major independent tournaments since RIOT began the LCS. However, Carmac confirmed that ESL will continue with other League tournaments on a national level.
The original reddit post has been removed due to rules about vote manipulation and posting on twitter.
Image courtesy of ESL
