AFK Weekly: OpTic Fully Takes Over Envy Gaming

Hello everyone! After the Wild Rift Icons Global Championship 2022 was moved from Madrid to Singapore due to logistical and visa issues, Riot Games has once again been forced to shift the location of another World Championship. This time, it's Wild Rift’s PC counterpart League of Legends that is being affected. 

Riot has announced that one of the semifinals of the League of Legends World Championships 2022, originally scheduled to take place in Toronto, Canada, will be moving to the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, citing difficulties in obtaining player visas for entry into Canada as a result of the ongoing global health crisis.

Unfortunately, the pandemic continues to play spoilsport for many esports titles and could affect other global championships being planned around the world. Bigger tournament organizers who have the budget to immediately shift to alternative venues/countries will not be as affected as smaller third-party event organizers who may not have the resources to make such drastic shifts.

For the time being, we may only see highly localized LAN events from these smaller tournament organizers, while letting the bigger players such as Riot, ESL, BLAST, and PGL pull off the biggest events.

— Vignesh Raghuram, Supervising Editor, AFK Gaming