Respawn bug in League plagues LCK match between DRX and NS RedForce

During today’s LCK match between DRX and NS RedForce, both support players were revived almost immediately after they had been killed in separate fights. While this could have been possible should the teams be playing as Akshan, there was no Akshan in the game, confusing the spectators, casters, and League of Legends fans alike.

The first instance of this occurred in a teamfight for DRX’s Hextech Soul in game one, where Beryl’s Amumu had been killed near the start of the fight. Instead of waiting for his respawn, DRX’s support was surprised to see that he had respawned instantly after the fight had concluded, leading him to pause the game. NS RedForce declined a Chronobreak, so the game resumed accordingly.

A teamfight for Baron in the same game resulted in NS RedForce’s support, SnowFlower, also experiencing the same bug and respawning almost immediately after dying—seemingly not even respawning in the fountain, rather closer to the nexus towers. DRX sought to kill the support player while he was in his fountain, successfully doing so, but the bug once again occurred and SnowFlower respawned without a timer to a spam of question-mark pings.

While it’s not clear what exactly caused this bug to occur on multiple occasions in a single game, the LEC has since prohibited the use of Hexflash in all upcoming games due to a “severe issue.” It is likely that this rune had something to do with the instant respawns of Beryl and SnowFlower in today’s series, which ultimately pushed NS RedForce out of playoff contention in the LCK.

The LEC is the only region to have issued a temporary restriction on Hexflash. But if this rune is the cause of the respawn bug, it is likely other regions will follow suit before their games this weekend.