League of Legends: China's LPL Spring Playoffs postponed twice due to COVID
League of Legends (LoL) developer Riot Games has made a decision to once again postpone the 2022 Tencent LoL Pro League (LPL) Spring Playoffs amid the rise of COVID-19 cases in China.
The announcement was made on LPL’s social media pages on Wednesday (6 April), the same day that China announced the highest daily tally since the start of the pandemic.
— LPL (@lplenglish) April 6, 2022
The playoffs were already postponed last week by Riot from 30 March until 8 April for the same reason.
The LPL team came up with the decision “to protect the health and safety of our players, coaches, team personnel, and staff”.
China issued a lockdown last month amid the Omicron variant outbreak, after cases in the country started to struggle with the rise of cases in the mainland, where most of the cases are in Shanghai, Beijing, and its neighbouring province Jilin.
The lockdown in Shanghai was extended on Tuesday (5 April) after the city reported a surge of more than 13,000 asymptomatic cases and 268 symptomatic cases. China also reported over 20,000 cases on the same day.
The playoffs are set to resume next week on 12 April, where the LPL’s current top seed Victory Five will face Top Esports in a best-of-five (bo5) series in the Upper Bracket Semifinals.
Second seed Royal Never Give Up will face JD Gaming the next day (13 April) in another bo5 series, also in the Upper Bracket semis. The playoffs will be played remotely.
LPL also mentioned in their announcement that the Spring Split Finals schedule will be confirmed at a later date.
— LPL (@lplenglish) April 6, 2022
Doinb says LPL might not have a representative in MSI if not allowed to play remotely
In a recent stream translated by Twitter user cutebchu, LNG Esports mid laner Kim "Doinb" Tae-sang mentioned that “if the LPL representative can’t play remotely in [the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI)], they may not attend the tournament because of the Asian game(s) and the LPL Summer Split schedule".
The translation also mentioned that if an LPL team joined remotely, the team would likely face “30 ping like the Mid Season Cup” in 2020, an online event that replaced that year's MSI. This would also much less than the 200 ping teams from the LEC would face,
Doinb also explained that the LPL representatives wouldn't have to quarantine in South Korea, but they would have to quarantine for the required 21 days when they return to China following the event.
China mandates 14 days of centralized quarantine and seven days of health monitoring after entering the city of Shanghai.
This would mean that returning players would be unable to participate in the LPL Summer Split because it had been compressed into a single month due to the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
The MSI 2022 has recently been confirmed to take place in Busan, South Korea, and will have teams from 11 regions participating. The League of Legends Continental League (LCL) will already miss the MSI this year due to the Russia-Ukraine.
It remains to be seen if the LPL will be able to participate in the International mid-season competition, and fans of the LPL and the LoL Esports community are crossing their fingers and filling themselves with “Hopium” as they await how the events unfold in the coming weeks.
Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.
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