Last week League of Legends held the playoff tournament for its Season Two World Championship. While the first two days of the three day event went by relatively smoothly, the third day was marred by connectivity problems and other issues that in some cases forced a match reset. With persisting issues plaguing the third day of the tournament, Riot Games made the decision to delay the final day's events.

To make matters worse, Massively has reported that allegations of cheating have surfaced from home viewers claiming that certain teams turned their heads to take a peek at the opposing team’s map, which was viewable on stage for the audience. Players in the tournament were instructed to face forward at all times during the event by Riot staff, but some photos posted by the community seem to indicate that some may not have listened.

The eSports tournament has a prize pool of $2,000,000 up for grabs, so naturally the competition is heated. In response to one of the allegations, the lead referee for the event, J.T. "RiotTiza" Vandenbree, posted the following message to confirm that team WE was not found to be breaking the rules.

“As the lead referee for this event, let me respond.

We keep a constant watch on all the players on stage at all times. We have cameras as well as live people walking onto stage to keep tabs in everything. All players are told that they need to remain sitting, facing forward, and with headphones on at all times, including during pauses. I can personally confirm that no WE player looked at the minimap at any point during the match.

Players make eye contact on stage fairly regularly. Team WE in particular talked directly to each other a good amount. A single, limited camera view with a field of a few feet is not enough to determine where a someone is looking on a cross-stage scale. We directly monitor players to assure this is not the case, and maintained due diligence at all times over the course of the event.

Say what you like about WE's gameplay, but they did not jeopardize their chances of staying in the tournament by looking at the minimap (EDIT for clarity- because they didn't look at the minimap. If they had looked at the minimap, it would have jeopardized their standing in the tournament. I am not, in any way, condoning any player who gains an unfair advantage from any means).”

The remaining matches has been rescheduled and will be streamed from a new location with a secure Internet connection on October 10th, 2012 at 5:00pm PT with free HD stream as posted by Riot Games' VP of eSports, RedBeard. Redbeard also posted a recap of the Day 3 issues and what the team is doing to improve the eSports scene in the futre to eliminate potential issues experienced over this weekend's event.

Via Massively, Kotaku

Source: League of Legends Tournament Delay Announcement, Response to Cheating Allegations Post 1, Post 2