Riot Games is canceling the 2020 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Riot global head of esports John Needham updated fans on MSI today, which was initially pushed back to July. But to “ensure the health and safety” of all participants, the event is no longer being held.
An Update from John Needham, Global Head of Esports:https://t.co/Omqq78jVNh pic.twitter.com/uAIGlBCAUt
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) April 23, 2020
“With this model plus input from health authorities, local governments, regional leagues and teams, travel experts, and other stakeholders, we have made the difficult decision to not hold MSI in 2020,” Needham said. “We believe this decision was necessary to ensure the health and safety of the players, teams, crew, partners, media, and fans.”
With MSI being canceled, Riot will implement a few changes to address seeding for the 2020 World Championship.
Since the LPL and LEC are ranked first and second right now based on their international performances over the last two years, each region will have four qualifying teams for Worlds. The VCS will be allocated a second seed since it has the strongest international performances out of all the single-seed leagues.
Here are the 2020 Worlds regional seed distributions.
- LPL (China), LEC (Europe): Four teams each
- LCK (Korea), LCS (North America): Three teams each
- PCS (Southeast Asia), VCS (Vietnam): Two teams each
- CBLOL (Brazil), TCL (Turkey), LJL (Japan), LLA (Latin America), OPL (Oceania), LCL (Commonwealth of Independent States) : One team each
More information on Worlds will be released closer to the event.
This might not come as a shock for most League of Legends fans, though. Two days ago, Travis Gafford also reported that the major international tournament would be canceled. The fate of MSI was constantly in the air due to the ever-changing situation surrounding COVID-19, even though Riot made big scheduling changes to “[offer] the best chance to see travel restrictions lifted” for teams arriving from across the world. But it seems like the situation involving the pandemic hasn’t improved enough to warrant hosting the event.
As a result of MSI’s reported cancellation, FOMOS says that Riot will increase the number of seeds that will compete at the upcoming World Championship. Kenzi reports that Europe’s LEC and China’s LPL will get four seeds at the tournament, while the VCS and PCS will get two seeds. Kenzi also believes that this will be announced during Riot’s Worlds 2020 reveal.
There are three months left until MSI’s supposed start date. The situation might be improving across parts of the globe, but in places like North America and Europe, COVID-19 is still spreading at an alarming rate.
Although MSI is canceled, Worlds should be a realistic goal when November rolls by.
