Riot executive producer explains Wild Rift’s delay in North America, South America, and India

After being initially announced as a 2020 release on Android and iOS, Riot Games announced earlier this month that League of Legends: Wild Rift would be delayed until 2021 for players in North America, South America, and India. As expected, fans weren’t too happy about that.

Today, Wild Rift tweeted a message from Riot’s executive producer, Micheal Chow, for fans in those regions. Chow talked about the reasons that have caused this delay.

The main reason for Wild Rift’s delay is the COVID-19 pandemic, Chow said. He explained that the pandemic has left the team “grounded and unable to travel,” making it so they cannot follow usual procedure to launch new servers for other regions. The pandemic has also caused other “technical constraints and complicated each region’s own unique set of challenges and requirements.”

“It has become a much more complex and multi-faceted problem to bring service to your regions in particular,” Chow said. He added that rushing the game isn’t a solution because that could make players face a lot of problems and may require an entire reset of the game’s servers.

Chow also addressed the problems newer players may face in jumping into the ecosystem of a global game so late. He said Riot is working to make sure that newer players don’t face too much of a disadvantage. One way of doing this will be by implementing ways to get champions more easily in these regions.

Wild Rift will be entering an open beta in several regions of the world on Oct. 27. Riot plans to launch it in Europe, Oceania, and most parts of Asia in early December.