I actually wonder about this though it probably won't likely get an honest answer because there's no way it wouldn't be detrimental to PR to give a straight answer.

TotalBiscuit posted a video giving his views on Riot and how these events played out at the S2 Quarter/Semis and raised a very good and probably controversial point. Because Riot is owned by Tencent and because Tencent simply has so much money, it simply allows Riot to throw money at their attempt at LoL/eSports. While other events have relied on sponsorship and try to rely on sponsorship, Tencent/Riot's approach seems to be keeping it in-house and using their own money. I mean, even StarCraft 2 runs sponsored events.

So the result is that even if Riot bungles it up, they have no one to answer to and no fear that sponsors will run away because they are their own sponsor. So it would actually be in their own interest to protect the Korean teams and let the issue die down rather than take action because having the Korean scene be offended by action costing them teams is more hurtful than having sponsors stop backing events because... there are no sponsors.

Pfhht clearly noone gives a **** about Australia.. I've gotta wake up at 3am to watch this.

Have you considered starting later? The grand finals are actually not scheduled that bad, I am considering to just wake up at 4 am and watch the first game over breakfast. Having the final playoffs starting at 2am (CEST) during a weekday means many people will not be able to see it (dedication and stuff is fine, but some people have jobs where you can not be without sufficient sleep), because it's just the absolute worst time for Europe.


I am also still waiting for an explanation of what went down:

• - Why was it possible for an internet outage to affect play in the first place? Why was there no on site servers? There is a tournament server (I think it is used for tournaments such as Dreamhack and the like), why was that not on site? Even if it's somehow wired to work over the internet, it is really not hard to set up a local network and make the server believe it's the intertubes. When one of the commentators mentioned the low ping the other day, I was actually wondering "is that not asking for trouble? Relying on a third-party connection?" That must have occurred to Riot's best and brightest, too, right?
• - Why was a power outage able to affect play? One would assume that at least the player computers and related stuff would have been connected to a UPS.
• - Why were the soundproof booths not used (those from MLG)? I remember somebody commenting that these are, in fact, Riot's property and would be used in further tournaments. And how on earth could you not notice that players could see the minimap? Somebody gotta have noticed that, right? I am not accusing somebody of cheating, because I do not know what really happened. But the fact that it was possible to see the minimaps from the player's seats immediately casts a shadow over any suspicious turn of head. Something that could easily have been prevented.
• - How on earth did you have problems with sunlight on the second day? I understand that this might happen at the first day, given that you not always have a venue for a full day in advance (even though it appears to have been the case here). But after the first day, somebody must have put that down on the checklist, right? We all have had problems with sun shining on computer screens, but nobody cared to get rid of the problem for the next day?
• - What exactly caused the delay on the first day? I was really disappointed to just look at a "coming up soon" for over an hour, only accompanied by some reddit rumors, and then not even have the delay mentioned by the hosts. That is extremely bad manners.

I realize that watching the streams is free and nobody forced me to do it. But then again, it was very convincingly said "Come watch our cool stuff", and then that cool stuff did not manifest. And that is wasting my time, and that is a very precious resource. It's also not growing back. Even more, it wasted the time of a lot of other people. Half a million viewers (not counting China and Korea) times four hours of wasted time (I count the actual game time not as wasted. YMMV) is two million hours of time that is not coming back. You could even go so far and assume that if those two million hours had been spent working on a modest 5€ per hour, that is ten million Euros of damage. It's even more in Dollars.

I also realize that, of course, Riot did not crash the servers on purpose. I also think that very few, if any (:-)), Rioters actually enjoy wasting other people's time, so none of the mistakes I think have been made have been made on purpose. Finally, I really beleive Rioters are doing the best they can to get this thing sorted out. It is easy to see you really care about LoL and E-sports, and what happened hurt you deeply. Probably more than the average viewer. But there is no denying a certain carelessness, and I would like to know why that happened. I believe that the answer to a lot of my questions is "we did not think of it/what could possibly go wrong", but this still leaves us entitled to an answer. And if that answer leaves Riot in a bad light, I still think it should be given. Also, I could be wrong with my assumptions, in which case an answer would actually help me feel less annoyed. Maybe other people, too.

As of now, this tournament feels like a train wreck. A lot of time has been spent for nothing, the semifinals will probably not be watched by many Europeans (who stayed awake until 5.30am three days in a row) , and doubt is cast over many of the team's integrity. I am an avid CLG:eu fan, but I am considering to hope for a series of M5 2-0 victories just to have a clear, undoubted winner of the tournament. That is, by the way, not in any way saying that I think CLG.eu cheated (they are incredible), but the endless remakes leave some doubts over any winner of that BO3, be it CLG or WE. What a mess.

P.S: I realize that these points coincide almost completely with those made by Totalbiscuit on his mailbox thingy. This has been bugging me since Sunday. These are my own feelings.
Also, the list feature seems not to work.

Yay Let Tsm! Play There Moral SHould be alot better! because they were so sad when azubu found out
they knew the strat which made them sad while playin TSM!

Hi redbeard,

Just throwing in my two cents;

WE and CLG.eu game should be reset to a bo3. A bo3 series is just that, a series. Its a marathon, not a sprint. If a team gets "cheesed" in a bo3 they have a time to regroup, rethink, and react to the situation at hand. However, in a bo1, this obviously can not happen. The match was such a debacle on Saturday for both teams, that I think the best plan of action in this particular case is just to reset the bo3 and have these teams duke it out again.

I think no matter which team you are rooting for, most people would rather see a rematch (which would be much more conclusive in my eyes) rather than trying to just "finish off" what happened on Saturday.

Any chance you'll be showing replays? I'd love to watch, but I have to work. And I dont think my university would appreciate it if I make my statistics class watch LoL...more's the pity.

I suprised riots was lack of preparation for cheating yet , despite collusion between crs and dig on MLG .

tbh idc if anyone cheated or not.
I didn't see all matches and didn't really pay attention to how they were sitting but as it appears from posts, screen was in such position that if you turn your head slightly you can see minimap.
It'd really kill me having to have my head straight into screen without moving it around for 30mins.

So add the need to move your head as exercise to the fact that they placed screen in such place it's easy for you to look it's like they were asking for it.

Only one to blame is Riot for this.I don't want anyone to be disqualified nor matches to be redone, just hope Riot learns from this and prepares accordingly for the next set of matches.

Maybe have the players sit in a position where they can not see the damn screen and you won't have this problem.

What will happen if you guys realize that azubu frost was cheating and tsm had a chance to win if it wasnt for that