Riot Games announces the LPL will play remotely at MSI 2022

Riot Games has announced that the Chinese representative from the LPL will play remotely at the Mid-Season Invitational.

Due to ongoing travel restrictions in China, the representative from League of Legends esports’ largest region won’t be in South Korea for the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational. Instead, the Chinese players will be playing from inside China, the first occurrence of a remote attendance to the main stage of an MSI in the history of the game.

LPL will play remotely at MSI

The Chinese representatives at the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational will play remotely from their team headquarters or the LPL Arena rather than attending in person. Riot Games has been trying to navigate hosting the world’s largest esports events with evolving logistical concerns worldwide and this development is the latest accommodation made.

Mid-Season Invitational 2022 Update: https://t.co/Hi9GDJtCoM pic.twitter.com/JqMZV6owjd

— LoL Esports (@lolesports) April 21, 2022

These concerns had led to several previous events being rescheduled to Reykjavik. This year’s Mid-Season Invitational is scheduled to be in South Korea. This is a historic first in the history of the game, with an attendee of a major event not actually being on the same continent as the rest of the competitors. The idea of competitors at an international event not being on stage is completely alien to League of Legends esports.

Luckily for the LPL, this year is much closer to China than previous events in Iceland. Riot will be making an active effort to preserve consistent ping across all teams by falsifying a ping of 32ms for all teams during the event. This is the same tool Riot Korea and Riot China used for the LPL vs. LCK Showdown in 2020, so the system is proven, just not on the second-largest stage in the game. The LPL winner hasn’t yet been crowned, so fans don’t even know which team will be forced to play from home.