Viewers of the League of Legends World Championship tournament alleged that players cheated during the competition. The World Championship took place over the weekend.
"In hindsight, the potential visibility of minimap screens for players was a mistake," Dustin "Redbeard" Beck, vice president of Riot eSports, explained what exactly happened, Gameplanet reported. "Despite on-site referees, close monitoring of player cams backstage, and stage design that ensured players would have to turn more than 90 degrees to be able to catch a glimpse of the minimaps, even the possibility of unfair play was simply unacceptable."
"We are re-examining photos, videos and renders of the stage layout to definitively understand sight lines between the players on-stage and the minimaps overhead," said Redbeard in the game's official thread. "We're taking it a step further moving forward to completely ensure the screens aren't visible to players.
"Regarding yesterday's connection failures, we had a string of issues including a power failure, and two Internet connectivity incidents we are continuing to investigate. It sucks that this happened, but we're going to dive deep into the root cause to see if there are any other redundancies that could safeguard against this in the future."
The prize money for the tournament is $2 million. There were technical issues, followed by cheating allegations.
Internet connections dropped thrice, forcing Riot to postpone matches. Competitors turned their heads to look at the minimaps.
"We keep a constant watch on all the players on stage at all times. We have cameras as well as live people walking onto stage to keep tabs in everything," RiotTiza, e-sports coordinator and lead referee for the tournament, had said earlier in a statement. "All players are told that they need to remain sitting, facing forward, and with headphones on at all times, including during pauses. I can personally confirm that no WE player looked at the minimap at any point during the match."
Over the coming week, playoffs will continue and eventually culminate in the grand finale, Oct. 13.
