League of Legends MSI 2022: RNG’s games to be replayed due to ping issues

It’s the fourth day of the League of Legends (LoL) Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2022, but LoL developer Riot Games has decided the three matches Chinese team Royal Never Give Up (RNG) have played thus far will be replayed.

This follows the latency or ping issues that teams playing against RNG have faced in the first three days of the tournament.

RNG, the representatives for China's League of Legends Pro League (LPL), have been competing in the MSI remotely due to lockdowns and travel restrictions in the country as a result of a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.

In an announcement on Thursday (13 May), Alex Francois, Global Head of Competitive Operations for Riot Games, confirmed what players at the MSI have reported: there were latency issues in their games against RNG.

"Following extensive technical evaluation of the competitive and training environments during the first three days of the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational, we discovered following Day 3 that there was a discrepancy in the latency being reported in-game logs for all matches versus what was being experienced in the Busan venue," Francois said in the statement.

"A 35 ms ping was originally intended to level the playing field between RNG and the rest of the teams. This has been tested prior to the event, but the Latency Tool wasn’t calculating and displaying the correct ping value for players at the venue.”

This meant that teams playing in Busan experienced a higher ping than what RNG was experiencing playing remotely from China.

According to the Q&A in the statement, Riot was made aware of the concerns from the pro players in Busan on 11 May. Riot then conducted an investigation, and "enlisted the help of senior Riot engineers from the League Development team".

They also set up a test environment on 12 May to simulate the network environment from the event and found discrepancies.

"To address this issue, we are making a configuration change starting with today’s competition in order to reduce the overall latency to the intended level," Francois said.

"As a result, we have determined it is in the best interest of competitive integrity to replay all three of these matches."

The games to be replayed are RNG’s matches against PSG Talon from the Pacific Championship Series, Istanbul Wildcats (Turkey), and Red Canids (Brazil). All three matches matches were notably won by RNG.

The games to be replayed will be completed before 15 May, which is the last day of the MSI Group Stage.

“We apologize to our players, teams, and fans, and we will continue to work with players to monitor the playing environments in our commitment to maintain the tournament’s competitive integrity,” Francois added.

For everything you need to know about MSI 2022, click this link.

Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.

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