At the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational, all matches in the first round of the group stage of the Chinese league team ‘Royal Never Give Up (RNG)’, which are embroiled in controversy over preferential treatment, have been invalidated. The difference in game response speed (ping) that was raised between players and fans turned out to be true.
On the 13th, on the League of Legends (Lol) e-sports official website, Alex François, global head of game operation at Riot Games, announced that all matches played by RNG in the first round of the group stage will be nullified and a rematch will be conducted. . This is because the in-game ping at the stadium was higher than expected, and this is because RNGs participating in online matches in China benefited greatly. RNG’s group stage round 1 match will be played again on the 14th and 15th.
According to the statement, after the game on the 11th, players raised a problem about ping and checked the game log. Extensive testing and review found that the ping recorded in the match log at the Busan Stadium was higher than the intended 35ms. As a result, it was revealed that the teams that played in Busan played in a disadvantageous environment compared to RNG, which played the game remotely in the intended 35ms environment. If the ping is high, the character’s reaction will be slow, which causes a lot of inconvenience in operation.
In response to the question of ‘Didn’t you get it faster in the pre-test stage?’, Alex Francois general manager said, “We conducted a comprehensive check before and during the contest, but there were no problems with the tools we had and the pre-test.” After receiving feedback from the players, we realized that the previous inspection was wrong.”
In the end, the controversy over the preferential treatment of RNG due to the forced 35 ping and the suspicions raised by the players that it seems to proceed with a ping higher than 35 ms have been found to be true to some extent. All players, including ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok Lee, had already complained of inconvenience from the first day of the competition, saying that there was a ping difference between the practice area and the competition area. However, it turned out that there was actually a technical problem, and all the players who faced RNG played on a sloped field.
Among RNG players, Yangwei “Wei” Yangwei, Wei “Gala” Chen, and Seon-ming “Ming” Shi expressed their dissatisfaction by posting a scale emoticon meaning a fair judgment in Weibo posts.
Meanwhile, RNG has been embroiled in allegations of preferential treatment and violation of regulations in addition to response speed. In particular, on the first day of the opening day, the scene where the players played the game in a situation where there was no set headset, shoes and other clothes not properly equipped, and there were no referees or face cams, drew outrage from fans around the world. Riot Games had an explanation for this, but the fans’ reaction to the unclear content was not good.
