The 2022 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational already has its fair share of controversy and player complaints since the event is being played on 35 ping to accommodate Royal Never Give Up, the LPL representative who is forced to compete remotely due to COVID travel restrictions in Korea and China. And last night, Evil Geniuses’ head coach Peter Dun revealed another situation at MSI when he said Riot was going to make all competitors wear masks on stage.
But now, this situation has been resolved, with Dun saying that Riot walked back the decision for players to wear masks.
With the enforced ping at MSI considerably higher than it usually is in many leagues around the world, there was already worry that conditions at the tournament were not conducive to serious competitive play. Riot potentially enforcing a mask mandate only exacerbated those fears, with Dun and others noting that many players wear glasses and that those players would be placed at a disadvantage if and when masks caused those glasses to fog.
Dun’s thread went further, noting that there was nothing in the rulebook about any proposed mask mandate and that players in both the LCK and LPL appeared maskless on stage just a month ago.
Whether the short-lived mask mandate was a late ruling by Riot or a misunderstanding, players will not need to wear masks on stage during MSI 2022. With the mask debacle behind them, teams can now focus on the tournament at hand.
EG lost their opening group stage match of the tournament to G2 today, while home team T1 handily dispatched Vietnamese representatives Saigon Buffalo on the first day of the competition.
