Game-altering bug at Worlds 2022 likely contributes to Top Esports’ elimination
Well-known League of Legends bug hunter Vandiril has tweeted that a bug might have impacted the game between GAM Esports and Top Esports, resulting in the latter team’s elimination from the tournament.
According to Vandiril, a bug with the item Maw of Malmortius caused it to fail to protect TES bot laner Yu “JackeyLove” Wen-Bo from GAM jungler Đỗ “Levi” Duy Khánh’s ultimate skill.
The game’s ending was intense, with GAM’s Nexus surviving with only a sliver of HP. GAM top laner Trần “Kiaya” Duy Sang forced the hero to stall TES on his own, and Levi’s damage from the Karthus ultimate gave GAM just enough advantage to turn the fight around.
However, upon closer examination, Lucian’s Maw of Malmortius did not negate damage from Karthus’ ult, preventing Jackeylove from striking the opposing nexus.
Champions who take a lot of magic damage typically get a big shield and an extra omnivamp from Maw of Malmortius for a short time. However, the item did not perform as intended, which was most likely due to a bug.
Vandiril went on to show what Maw’s passive shield should have looked like when it was working properly against Karthus, as well as how much damage Lucian should have taken. That, combined with the Omnivamp granted by Maw of Malmortius’ passive shield, would have contributed significantly to JackeyLove’s survival.
“We will never know if TES would have won this without the bug or not,” Vandiril said. “Some say they would, some say they wouldn’t. We won’t find out.”
“The only 100 percent conclusion is: League is a mess. It’s a shame that countless bugs are ruining the only truly important international tournament we have.”
‘Riot won’t say anything about the bug’
Riot Games has not addressed the bug even though many professional League players, casters and analysts have spoken out about it, including the current head coach of Fnatic, Jakob “YamatoCannon” Mebdi.
“Riot won’t say anything about the bug because their sentiment/ruleset has always been if players don’t spot bugs themselves it won’t be accounted for,” YamatoCannon tweeted.
“I remember games where I saw bugs from backstage and I couldn’t even fight to pause or chronobreak.”
Following the controversy, LEC caster Alex “Nymaera” Hapgood also expressed his opinion on Twitter, saying, “I don’t envy the person in charge of making decisions over this. But the teams will have had hours of stewing in wake of being knocked out, and Rogue/DRX have already played their tie breaker.”
Joining them, MAD Lions Midlaner Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer also retweeted Vandiril’s post with the caption: “wesh la dingz.”
While there is no guarantee that TES would have won the tiebreaker and advanced to the Quarterfinals, they were never given the chance. This is what devastated TES players. Ling “Mark” Xu, a TES support player, said in a post-game interview that he was “probably going to retire.”
Maw’s bug wasn’t the first potentially game-altering bug discovered in Worlds 2022. Vandiril previously reported a bug with Orianna’s ultimate skill during a TES vs. DRX match, which resulted in her being disabled for the tournament.
Despite Riot’s claim that the Orianna bug was “newly discovered,” Vandiril said that the bug might have been introduced by the Worlds patch 12.18.
