League of Legends developer cracking down on VPN usage amidst beta launch

league of legends
(Image credit: Riot Games)

The developers of the massively popular online battle game League of Legends have announced a change in VPN policy for their latest release.

Players not located in these regions have had to rely on a VPN to access the game but it appears that this is creating a few problems. As a result, Riot Games has confirmed that VPN access from the highest volume VPN solutions based outside the beta regions will be blocked immediately.

League of Legends: Wild Rift is currently only available as an open beta version in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

“In order to protect the best in-game experience, we’re making a few changes to VPN logins across all our games, with the biggest impact being on Wild Rift,” Landon McDowell, Wild Rift's Director of Technical Operations, explained

“It’s become increasingly clear that a ton of you… FAR more than we expected… want to play the Wild Rift beta. As we’ve been monitoring the in-game experience, we’ve noticed a range of problems in games that include players who have used a VPN to log in from outside the beta regions. These issues range from an inconvenience (like language barriers) to outright game-breaking problems (like unplayable lag spikes for everyone—not just the players on VPN).”

Access Denied

The League of Legends makers did stress that it was a difficult decision to prevent anyone from accessing the game, but believe it is the right move to make sure the beta players receive the best possible experience. 

The developer also confirmed that individuals based in the beta regions, but who are using a VPN, will not be blocked.

Unfortunately, this means that anyone based outside of the seven beta regions will simply have to wait to play the latest version of League of Legends, which has been designed for smartphones and home consoles. 

It is scheduled for release in Europe and other parts of Asia in early December before coming to North and South America in spring 2021.

Barclay Ballard

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.