LCS was forced to remake a World 2023 qualifying game between Team Liquid and Golden Guardians after a bug caused a “significant disadvantage” to one of the players.
On August 13, the LCS played its Lower Bracket semi-final match between Team Liquid and Golden Guardians. This match would determine which team would get a direct ticket to Worlds 2023 and who would need to go through another qualifier for a chance at the biggest event of the year.
Team Liquid won the first two games of the series and it seemed as if the team headlined by two Worlds winners was going to take the series in fast fashion. However, Golden Guardians threatened a comeback, winning games three and four.
The fifth game was to determine which team was going to Worlds. However, it hit a roadblock at the start due to a bug that affected a Golden Guardians player.
GG Huhi took Unsealed Spellbook and switched to Teleport. The Teleport summoner spell switched to Unleashed Teleport which caused Huhi to permanently have Teleport instead of his original summoner spells. Due to the significant disadvantage caused by this bug that cannot be…
— LCS (@LCSOfficial) August 14, 2023
As explained by the LCS Twitter account, “Golden Guardian’s Huhi took Unsealed Spellbook and switched to Teleport. The Teleport summoner spell switched to Unleashed Teleport which caused Huhi to permanently have Teleport instead of his original summoner spells.”
The announcement further explains the remake, “Due to the significant disadvantage caused by this bug that cannot be resolved by chronobreak, League Officials will remake Game 5 of Golden Guardians vs Team Liquid.”
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A pause was called 12 minutes into the fifth game due to the bug, and the pause would halt the game for 40 minutes of the broadcast before LCS officials made the decision to remake the game.
After the pause, the game was restarted, with no changes apart from Huhi now having Unsealed Spellbook as originally intended, rather than Teleport.
Unfortunately for Golden Guardians, their reverse sweep did not come true in silver scrapes as Team Liquid closed out the series 3-2 and booked their tickets to Worlds 2023.
Questions did arise from commentators about whether the Golden Guardians could have won the series if their momentum had not been cut short due to the pause.
However, they now move down and will play in the Worlds Qualifying Series against an LEC team to determine the last Worlds 2023 slot for the West.