Riot Games Forced To Apologise For 'Ironic Joke' After Furious Fans Complain

The League of Legends 2021 World Championships is just around the corner, kicking off with the Play-In stages that gives 12 teams a shot at the final four Group Stages slots. 

Having recently had the two Play-Ins groups and fixtures revealed in a live draw by G2 Esports' Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski, Riot Games' fan hustle, "Pick 'Em's" was activated - a free to play fantasy draft that allows fans to win prizes for correctly picking the right results and standings from the real-life World Championships.

However, the Pick 'Ems will not be active during the Play-Ins stage, and Riot Games chose a cryptically sarcastic way of wording their reasoning behind the decision. The developers joked that "we don't support that fiesta", which has immediately rubbed the LoL faithful up the wrong way.

Personalities such as Desk Host Eefje "Sjokz" Depoortere voiced their displeasure surrounding the poorly worded jibe. Sjokz took to Twitter to say "I'm quite saddened by this wording. Disrespectful to 1) the fact that play-ins is such an important part of Worlds 2) the amazing teams and scenes from the play in regions. Really odd.

"Let's also not forget those 'fiesta' teams kept MAD out of Groups last year... better put some respect on their names."

LCS Shoutcaster Clayton "CaptainFlowers" Raines also chimed in to say "Honestly can't believe the official site has it worded like that. We all like to banter and bm each other during the games, but this s**t is just disrespectful to both the players and fans from those regions."

After much more backlash from the community, Riot Games were forced to apologise for their joke and make the necessary changes to their website.

By the medium of the official LoL Esports Twitter account, Riot Games' Director of Esports Product Management, Luke Cudney, apologised for the mistake. He claimed that the wording was posted by accident, after a member of Riot's team used the placeholder to make a joke and it wasn't corrected.

Whilst the Play-ins of LoL Worlds may not be the pinnacle of the event, the tournament has a rich history of teams making miracle runs to the Playoff stages. In 2018, both G2 Esports and Cloud9 stormed through the Play-In stages to come second in their groups, win their respective quarterfinal bouts before falling just shy of the Grand Final as Fnatic and Invictus Gaming prevailed. From the depths of the gauntlet, the third and fourth-best teams in the world were produced.

This year, Cloud9, Beyond Gaming and Hanwha Life Esports face tasty opposition in the Play-Ins despite being renowned as capable teams to make some huge moves in the latter Playoff stages.

Fans can now start their Pick 'Ems for the Group Stages, including a "Crystal Ball" pick that will reward players for choosing the winners of the League of Legends World Championships.

Worlds is due to kick off on October 5, lasting for an entire month.