League Of Legends Completely Shut Down Because… Riot Forgot The Game’s Security Certificate Was Expiring
Jack Coleman (He/Him) is a News Editor from Ireland. This is his third full year in games media, having previously worked freelance for various outlets, including DualShockers and NME.
Previously, he’s interviewed breakout indie developers, broken big news stories, reviewed massive releases and recounted his time living as a humble woodsman in Oblivion.
A lifelong gamer, Jack is primarily interested in RPGs and narrative experiences. He’s also been playing League of Legends for a decade, unfortunately.
In a world of advanced cyber-attacks, sophisticated network technology and more code than any one person can keep track of, there are a lot of things that can cause a multiplayer game to go temporarily offline. However, on rare occasions, these game-threatening problems are far simpler than one would think.
On January 4, everyone simultaneously lost the ability to log into League of Legends. This was during Riot Games’ annual holiday break, so, presumably, the live operations team wasn’t at full strength when this alert came in. A poor systems engineer on call during the final day of their holiday was probably bombarded with messages to solve an issue that rendered the entire game unplayable.
Could Have Happened To Anyone
In the end? It turns out Riot simply forgot that its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate for League of Legends’ client was expiring on January 4, meaning nobody could access the client until the certificate had been renewed. There is a comedic element to the fact that a multi-billion-dollar company like Riot Games didn’t have an alarm or alert set up anywhere forewarning this event, but alas.
This exact scenario actually unfolded exactly ten years ago, when the last security certificate for the client expired unbeknownst to Riot. At the time, engineer Brent “Brentmeister” Randall wrote, “We’re aware of this and taking a look now! Appears our cert expired for the new year when it should have auto-renewed. Happy New Years Redditors!”
League of Legends content creator Vandiril revealed that the certificate had expired, and made a video explaining that you could still access the game if you changed the clock on your PC to “go back in time.”
Obviously, this causes a myriad of other issues with other programs. Still, if you were desperate to play a game of League of Legends with others who were already logged into the client at the time of the cert’s expiry, then it was a valid option.
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Thankfully, the issue has now been resolved, and League of Legends is back up and running. Personally, I hope people are reading a similar news article about another expired certificate in 2036 after Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok’s sixteenth World Championship victory.
T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
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So did they just forget to remember to renew it this one time? Or did they get a certificate 10 years ago that was valid for 10 years? Anyway.. tells you even a multi billion dollar company is ‘only human’ I suppose LOL.
2026-01-05 22:34:45
