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Riot Games reportedly requested that all participants wear face masks during games at the 2022 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitation, but that rule has since been reversed.
The demand was made public by Evil Geniuses’ head coach Peter Dun and player Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme. Both participants took to social media platform Twitter to break the news, pointing out how ridiculous it sounds.
According to Dun, it is not in MSI’s rule book.
“Found out this morning that Riot are going to insist on all teams at MSI wearing face masks on stage at the venue in Korea even during games.
This is not in the rule book for MSI. Even KR and CN playoffs had players maskless during games (and you have to wear before/after).”
“On a team with multiple people who wear glasses, which will get fogged up in a high humidity studio environment, this kind of notice is absurd.
35 ping I’m not 100% in favor of, but I understand the logic and we were given a month to prep. But come on.”
Vulcan, while revealing the flaws with such a decision, sarcastically said he is looking forward to it.
“Learned yesterday that we have to play with masks on for MSI stage games. Can’t wait to first time foggy glasses league of legends and muffled mic comms today”
However, with both team members drawing notice to the reported rule, they also shared progress reports on the reversal of the decision. Dun thanked Riot for overturning the decision before the tournament commences.
“Thank you to the people at Riot for overturning this.
35 ping, we’ve known about for weeks, and have been scrimming non-stop to adjust. Although it’s not ideal, I’m glad a solution was found to include LPL. Treat it like a slightly weird game play patch.”
It is evident that Riot Games is trying to do everything it can to protect the players and staff from contracting COVD-19 during the tournament. However, a decision like this will hamper the players’ performance a great deal.
The 2022 MSI is being held in Busan, South Korea, with the group stage already kicked off. The tournament will run from May 10 to May 29.
Ten of the eleven teams in the competition made it to the LAN event, with the exception being LPL’s Royal Never Give Up. The Chinese team could not make it due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions in their home country.
However, Riot has made accommodations for them by allowing them to participate remotely. That decision resulted in everyone playing at 35 milliseconds to level the playing field.
All participants representing each of the 11 individual Riot leagues will be fighting for a larger piece of the $250,000 prize pool. In Group A, Japan’s DetonatioN FocusMe are off to a flying start, defeating Mexican Team Aze in their first game. Korea’s T1 also won their first game of the group stage against Vietnamese Saigon Buffalo.
Royal Never Give up will not play their first until May 12 against RED Canids. The team will be looking to assert their dominance early to have any shot of defending their title.
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