After T1’s latest playoff loss to Hanwha Life Esports, League of Legends fans around the world are looking to shift the blame for the team’s struggles towards the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have been plaguing the organization.
Over the last couple of months, the LCK has been dealing with a series of DDoS attacks at LoL Park in Seoul, causing the league to postpone games, switch to offline play, and even remove in-person crowds from the event as they continue their efforts to stem the tide. But it also looks like T1 has been dealing with the brunt of these attacks during their personal streams and scrims.
On March 20, T1 general manager Becker Jung revealed players were being hit with DDoS attacks during their streaming times, causing them to temporarily stop streams for the time being. This also forced the players to avoid playing on their own accounts in fear of getting attacked, with stars like Faker not playing on his main account in over two weeks. These attacks, unfortunately, continued to affect the entire team up to and including their latest game vs. HLE, where they were unceremoniously swept in three games. It was a stunning result that has fans worried for the rest of T1’s run through the lower bracket.
Faker also said in the team’s post-game conference that their performances were affected by the lack of proper scrims, but they’re still focused on preparing as best they can for their match against Dplus KIA. This could be a rough series for T1 since they’re going up against a big collection of strong opponents, including rookie jungler Lucid and two former World Champions in Kingen and ShowMaker.
With a lack of scrims and solo queue play, this might be one of the weakest forms of T1 we’ve seen in a long time. Catch T1 in action when they finally take on DK in the LCK 2024 Spring Playoffs on Sunday, April 7.
