League of Legends server issues persist in South Korea, internet cafe owners charged during outages

South Korean League of Legends servers have been plagued with ongoing issues since April, moving players and internet cafe owners offering the game in their stores to complain, according to numerous reports and the Korean League of Legends status page.

The status page indicates that throughout the past month, the game's servers have been unstable, suffered from backed-up login queues and unavailability of some payment methods, increased latency and game crashes. A website set up to track worldwide server status shows that while North American and European servers are running smoothly, colored bars indicate a handful of South Korean servers are crowded, plagued with issues or down entirely.

One player took to the r/LeagueofLegends forum on Reddit to complain, asking developer Riot Games to repair the servers. He noted that Riot's Korean branch previously promised to expand servers to prevent crowding, but the problem has persisted, resulting in players' being booted from ranked games and losing earned points.

Riot Games president Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill allegedly responded in the thread, stating the company has been working "round the clock" and "spared no expense" to address the Korean server issues.

"The massive success of LoL in Korea actually compounds the challenges," he wrote. "We will resolve these issues and this is not just a focus for Riot Korea — our global team has this as a major priority."

GameMeca reports the PC Bang Owners Association, an organization of Korean internet cafe owners, have lodged a complaint with Riot's Korean branch for charging them during the server outages. According to GameMeca, the complaint includes requests that Riot perform regular server maintenance, set up dedicated servers for internet cafes and address the outage billing issues.

Riot Games has promised a response by the end of the month, GameMeca reports.