Riot Games has announced a new access policy for its recently released League of Legends: Wild Rift Beta. In order to overcome in-game problems and provide a smoother experience for players, Riot decided to restrict the VPN access for the players outside the beta region.
Released on October 27, 2020, Wild Rift is currently available as an open beta version in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand.
Players outside these countries had to use a VPN to log in to the game but the developers have detected certain problems. The issues include language troubles and outright game-breaking issues for both VPN users and beta region players.
As a consequence of that, Riot Games has decided to block VPN access from the known VPN providers sending the highest amount of traffic outside the beta regions. The company says the motive behind this move is merely to protect the gaming experience for the players.
Replying to players
It seems Riot Games is committed to providing access to Wild Rift to as many players as they can. They are working on making the game available worldwide.
For now, though, the America-based esports tournament organizer, publisher, and video game developer thought blocking the VPN access was the best possible move to provide a smooth gaming experience to the largest audience.
The Director of Technical Operations for Wild Rift, Landon McDowell addressing the players in a letter saying:
“It kills us to turn off access to anyone, but we think this is the right move to make sure players in the beta can enjoy Wild Rift the way it was intended to be played.”
McDowell hinted that they may change the policy in future if things calm down. But at the moment, they do not have any plans to revert this decision.
However, players from the open beta region are allowed to use VPN and if their access is denied they can contact player support.
What’s attracting more players to Wild Rift?
League of Legends is a popular online battle game, and the latest Wild Rift version is the mobile and console version of League, currently available in certain regions of Southeast Asia.
Wild Rift Beta boasts a fast-play feature with fresh controls. With over more than a 1-year testing period, Riot Games developed the game for the big stage and is getting ready for primetime.
Riot plans to officially release Wild Rift across Europe and certain other regions by the end of this year. However, the beta version is anticipated to hit the North and South American territories later in 2021.
Riot Games did not specify the VPN deprived regions, but they did mention that they will target the regions with the heaviest volume. If the volume slows down and things come under control, the policy may change in the future.
Here one interesting take is, the company might not be able to block all the VPNs. They seem to be blocking traffic coming from VPNs users are using the most. Meaning those VPNs can probably deploy new IPs to get past the Wild Rift Beta block.
Or new VPNs that didn’t send heavy traffic to the firm before might still work without any problem. Let’s see how VPN users and companies respond to this move by Riot.
