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Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) Season 9 was slated to kick off on Saturday, February 1, but organizers have postponed all first-round fixtures in Europe and North America for a week due to server issues that have prevented players from connecting to the game.
The official Rocket League Esports Twitter account made a post explaining the situation and their actions: “Today’s RLCS matches have been postponed and will be moved to a later date. We understand that this is frustrating, but we feel it is in the best interest of competitive integrity to move them rather than attempt to play them out.”
Despite the prior reports of connectivity problems, the RLCS was to be played as initially planned. However, as soon as the event started, the pro players realized something was not right with the servers. The pre-match show went on as usual, with the hosts stalling the kickoff for nearly 30 minutes before the broadcast was cut off in order for the organizers to try and resolve the server issues.
Initially, it was said that the issue would be resolved shortly and matches would be delayed to 3pm PST, at which point the organizers would reassess the situation. While the fans waited, the stream showed a motion graphic which kept them updated with the situation.
That lasted for another half an hour until the Rocket League team announced they had failed to resolve the issue and that the problems with PsyNet were still ongoing on, ushering the organizers to reschedule the RLCS for next weekend.
The North American Play-In will be played on Saturday, February 8 at 2pm EST, while the European Play-In will take place on Sunday, February 9 at 1pm CET.
Those matches which were already completed before the postponement will have their results stand, while those which were in play at the time of the announcement or ended in a disqualification will be reset.
Rocket League developers put the game into maintenance mode on Sunday while they were working on fixing the server issues and restored online access in only about three hours. While there is no further information available at the time of writing, several Rocket League players have reported they are still experiencing high latency.
RLCS Season 9 will be played in four regions: North America, Europe, Oceania and South America. The North American and European regions each feature 10 Rocket League teams duking it out for the largest slice of a US $313,973 prize pool and a ticket for the RLCS Season 9 Finals, which will be awarded to the top four teams from each region.
The RLCS Oceanic Championship is slated to begin on Sunday, February 23. The League Play section will see eight Rocket League teams compete for the lion’s share of a $17,500 prize pool, with the top four teams progressing to the Regional Finals in April. There, a double-elimination format will be used to determine which two teams will head to the RLCS S9 Finals.
The South American Grand Series is scheduled to kick off on Sunday, February 9, featuring eight Rocket League teams competing for a share of $35,000 and one of the two available tickets to the final event of the season.
The Season 9 Rocket League Finals will take off on April 24, 2020 at Curtis Culwell Center in Dallas, Texas. There, the top 12 Rocket League teams from four regions will compete for the RLCS world title. The prize pool for the season’s culminating event is currently unknown.
