T1 lost to Hanwha Life Esports without winning a single match, an uncharacteristically bad performance from the reigning world champions. However, Faker claimed that the ongoing DDoS attacks in South Korea against the League of Legends servers have left them unable to practice.
Though they still have a chance to bring things back in the lower bracket, T1 got obliterated by Hanwha Life Esports in their first Playoffs match. It wasn’t close, with the result being a decisive 3-0 for HLE.
In the post-game interview, however, Faker blamed their inability to practice for their poor performance on stage. The last few weeks for the team have been plagued by DDoS attacks targeting the team whenever they try to solo queue, and the lack of practice has led in large part to the team’s degrading performance.
“In the process of preparing for the Playoffs, while other teams were able to practice, our team couldn’t practice in solo queue,” Faker claimed.
This had been a huge problem for every T1 member for weeks in advance of the competition, with the club making the call to cancel T1’s scheduled player streams entirely all the way back on March 20.
These DDoS attacks are of the same nature as those that crippled the LCK broadcast earlier in the split, something that led to LoL Park having its cybersecurity countermeasures strengthened to make pro matches playable at all.
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But, before Riot was able to find the problem, they had to pre-record pro matches and entirely suspend in-person attended for pro games. They’ve been able to get the LCK matches proper to run without being shut down by these attacks.
However, T1 doesn’t have the same luxury of these bolstered defenses in their practice facility, and Faker claimed that these attacks have really hit him and the team hard when it comes to practicing. This isn’t restricted to just solo queue, either; attacks of this type affect scrims as well.
Though T1 likely have tried to play on alt accounts to get some practice in, Faker’s main account hasn’t been touched in over two weeks at the time of writing.
apparently the DDOS attacks are hitting T1 so hard that they cant even scrim – teams are avoiding them because theyre constantly dcing so impossible to scrim the last few weeksalso players are having to swap accounts all the time to try to even play soloqt1 havent played… pic.twitter.com/Kx7tkBc4ny
— Caedrel (@Caedrel) April 4, 2024
“What’s most important is that we will have to do our best to prepare with the remaining time, even if the practice environment is bad,” Faker concluded.