The League of Legends Championship Series is serious business. Last year Taipei Assassins went home with a million dollars after winning, while tens of thousands of players watched live in North America alone. The world championship was actually televised in China and Korea. Obviously this makes the prospect of disqualifying a team a very big deal but such is exactly what has happened, and no one is happy about it.
against All authority has been disqualified from the European LCS playoffs after one of their players suffered a family emergency. The player had to leave in a rush and the team’s upcoming game was delayed. Even with the delay, aAa’s approved substitutes were unable to cover for the missing player, creating a dilemma for Riot Games.
The options at that point was to either allow aAa to field a player not on their eligible roster or to disqualify the team. In the interest of overall fairness, Riot chose to disqualify. As their vice president of e-sports Dustin Beck explained,
In the end the league felt it was unfair to SK and other teams to deviate from a substitution policy that could potentially correlate to an unfair disadvantage for an opponent.
An unpleasant reminder that even with professional gaming reality will occasionally rear its ugly head and refuse to be denied its gritty unfair fairness. SK Gaming, aAa’s opponent for the round, will play in the LCS finals.
