For the first time in competitive League of Legends, we saw a team winning without the nexus exploding. Echo Fox was granted a win over Clutch Gaming by Riot officials after all 10 players randomly disconnected from the client.
Both @EchoFoxLol and @ClutchGaming disconnected from the game. We are currently investigating the issue and appreciate your patience during the pause. #NALCS
— lolesports (@lolesports) June 17, 2018
Game pauses and crashes occur naturally in competitive esports but this marks the first time in LCS history that both teams got entirely kicked out. The crash happened 32 minutes into the game with Echo Fox in the lead. Since the entire game disappeared after all players got the boot, there was no possibility of getting the players back in the game or recreating the game back to how it was before the crash. With no possibilities of reconnecting Echo Fox were granted the win as they were ahead in the game.
Although being “ahead in the game” sounds very arbitrary, there’s actually an official rulebook that Riot uses to determine whether a team should be granted a win or whether the game should be remade entirely. One of the criteria is that the game must be at least past 20 minutes, which it was in this case. Further determinators are the gold percentage that one team is ahead over another, and the number of kills, turrets, and inhibitors that one team is ahead over another.
In this case, Echo Fox was ahead 10,000 gold, 7 turrets and also had 5 dragons more than CG. Although the kills were even and CG had the potential to make a comeback the chances were deemed too slim by the official referees. Riot probably never wants to use this rule as it’s a very unsatisfying way for games to end, however, it was most likely the right decision.
..and a 10k gold lead for FOX. League officials have ruled that CG did not have a reasonable chance to come back in this game and will award FOX with the game victory. (2/3)
— lolesports (@lolesports) June 17, 2018
In the past, we’ve had multiple examples where Riot has to remake a game in which one team was the clear favorite to win the game. Once the game is remade and the other team wins, the post-game backlash is often enormous. A famous example would be when Gambit Gaming took a win over SK Gaming but the game had to be remade. During the remake, SK Gaming changed up their strategies to easily win the game and fans all over the internet were outraged by this decision.
Riot has identified Taliyah as the reason why all players got kicked out the client as she was disabled during the next game, similar to when Gragas had to be disabled during worlds 2015. As of right now, it’s still unknown whether she will be enabled for next weeks matches.
Taliyah has been found to cause game server lag that may have contributed to CG vs FOX’s crash. We are administratively disabling Taliyah for the remainder of the day. Players will be warned not to pick Taliyah and will be forced to pick a different champion in champion select.
— lolesports (@lolesports) June 17, 2018
