Southeast Asia has had a torrid time in the world of esports in recent weeks.
For one, GAM Esports, the region’s hopeful, crashed out of League of Legends Worlds 2022, after finishing last in the group stages of the game’s premiere tournament.
But the Vietnamese team has won plaudits for their gameplay, especially against Top Esports (TES). The game got the Worlds viewers in awe with one of the most exciting game in Worlds 2022 so far. Analysts and content creators, however, have taken notice of something that have been plagued the game for a long time now: a bug that the game has never quite seem to get rid of.
Here’s what happened.
GAM Esports was set to face one of the Worlds’ favorites on October 16.
In the first half of the Worlds 2022 Group Stage, GAM Esports had lost all of their three best-of-one games. Their defeat against Rogue made it much harder for them to qualify to the knockout stage. But while GAM had nothing to lose, TES definitely had nothing but victory in their mind. A win against GAM would secure their spot in the quarterfinals.
With more at stake, the pressure was definitely on the TES.
GAM Esports quickly brought the heat to the game. At the early game, TES appeared to be having difficulties suppressing the intensity of GAM’s superstar, Levi. Despite their advantage on the gold lead the entire game, getting through Levi’s Karthus, a rather unusual draft pick for him, was definitely a nightmare. Sniffing a victory, GAM players’ morale was high as they were able to dominate the dragons.
TES were not ready to give up, however. Jackeylove’s Lucian successfully stole the Elder Dragon from GAM Esports at 39 minutes. With the teamfight did not go as planned, TES scored an ace and rushed straight toward the Nexus.
But as the whole TES players were busy with the Nexus, Levi and Kati had respawned just in time and fought back. GAM quickly wiped off everyone but Tian, who survived the teamfight, and pushed it down the middle to end the game.
The audience was thrilled. GAM’s victory have gained attention and was widely commented at the time. The social media timeline was loaded with various replies to both sides’ praise for the game. However, one of the tweets from well-known content creator LoL and bug enthusiast, Vandiril, aroused public interest.
“This bug might have eliminated TES from Worlds” Vandiril tweeted. Vandiril pointed out the Karthus ultimate enormous damage to Jackeylove’s Lucian and Mark’s Nami. Vandiril further stated that the fact that Jackeylove had the Maw of Malmortious, which grants a shield for its user against magic damage that put their health below 30%, should gave the protection that he needed to survive against Kerthus damage and, possibly, enough time to destroy the Nexus.
Vandiril’s tweet has garnered numerous responses from his followers, and viewers of Worlds as well. Several users have experimented with their own scenarios to prove the bug and posted their findings on Twitter.
TES defeat means that Rogue advanced to the quarterfinals alongside DRX, while both TES and GAM are out of competition.
But There Were More…
The bug that occured during GAM Esports vs TES game was not the first in the competition, as Vandiril has stated. Prior to that match, Riot decided to disable Orianna in response to a bug report in the match between GAM and Rogue Esports on October 9th. The champion was then made available again on October 12th.
The second bug, this time was Gnar, was discovered during the DRX vs TES match. Gnar’s boomerang throw failed to turn and return to him properly.
The third, yet another one spotted by Vandiril, was the tower bug that happened in the match between Fnatic and Edward Gaming (EDG). Vandiril pointed out how EDG’s turret didn’t attack the opponent’s Poppy despite attacking Jinx.
Fnatic’s head coach, YamatoCannon, has taken his concern to twitter in regards to Riot’s response to these informations. “Riot won’t say anything about the bug because their sentiment/ruleset has always been if players don’t spot bugs themselves it won’t be accounted for. I remember games where I saw bugs from backstage and I couldn’t even fight to pause or chronobreak,” YamatoCannon tweeted. Meanwhile, EU’s caster, Nymaera, simply said on his twitter that “unprecedented doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Given the rising complaint numbers and the audience’s growing mistrust of the quality of the gameplay, Riot will probably be snowed under with troubleshooting for the rest of the season.
