I Predict A 'Riot'!

The Saturday night of the League of Legends, Season 2 playoff's have already caused massive upset tonight in the LoL community. Networking issues have caused the stream (which had audience in the hundred thousands) to drop, as well as the game clients the professional players use to loose connection and the game themselves to end.

Now i am sure this isn't all down to Riot, but there seems to be a very casual feeling brought forward by the commentators around the issue, and rather than apologising, simply filling time. Riot must have employed a specialist networking company to set up for such a big event (using 5% of north Americas bandwidth) , and i can only guess in the weeks that follow they certainly won't be coming out smelling of roses. However shouldn't riot have put measures in place to stop this? Similar things have happened in previous esport events, and unfortunately the same replays were enforced, rather than being picked up where they left off. With prize pools reaching millions, should protocol not be in place before huge events such as this to protect the integrity of Riot themselves and the esports community. Capturing audiences this large has certainly got to attract the attention of tv network and broadcasters, but if they just can't deliver a professional standard for streaming, then i can't help but feel the esports scene will move backwards. Competitive gaming has the potential to one day move into mainstream media, but massive mishaps like this seen internationally is going to do the community massive damage and may make it fall flat on its face.

Many of those which played on the eu servers before the split will remember the 40 minutes que times to play, for several months, and their response was they were not prepared for the influx of players. I for one am lost for words for tonight, and i can't help but think old habits die hard with Riot. They seem to have the attitude of wait for it to go wrong and then fix it, rather than to put the safety measures for such large audience in place.

I'd like to wait before jumping the gun. Riots response to why this has happened may be fully justified, and they could be at no fault at all. But one thing for sure, set backs like these can only damage the world of esports!