Preface: The S16 season is about to start, and the majority of players have been paying attention to the recent off-season. After the Demacia Cup ended, the top teams in the LPL region made their last tweaks, allowing fans to relax for a bit. However, some players noticed that the client suddenly went into maintenance during the early hours, causing disconnections and preventing reconnection. The official announcement didn’t come until nearly 6 a.m. The crash quickly trended online. Many users discovered that Riot's game certificate had expired after ten years—time really flies.

Did Riot’s certificate expiration cause the game crash?

Most players are quite familiar with League of Legends. As an esports title, it has grown tremendously in just over a decade. In recent years, the LPL region has expanded rapidly with more teams, but overall performance has declined, even becoming somewhat of a training ground. This season, not even reaching the World Championship finals. During the winter transfer period, some top LPL teams reshuffled their rosters, but from the Demacia Cup results, the two most watched teams performed poorly and were eliminated early.

We thought nothing would happen during this off-season, but the client still encountered issues. In the early morning, some players playing ranked matches suddenly got disconnected and couldn’t reconnect; accounts also failed to log in. The LOL crash quickly trended again. Client problems have happened before, and bugs are common in competitive games, so players aren’t surprised as long as the official can fix it quickly. At 5:43 a.m., the official announced a downtime maintenance that started around 5 a.m. Players who were already in-game could continue, but those who exited couldn’t log back in.

Initially, we thought it was just another client bug, but some attentive players noticed this maintenance was different. Some found that Riot’s game certificate expired exactly at 4:03 a.m. on January 5, 2026. This timing aligns perfectly with the sudden maintenance. If true, it suggests Riot’s staff were careless, forgetting such a crucial ten-year certificate renewal. If they had known, the official announcement would have come earlier, as they usually notify players ahead of every update or skin release.

This incident quickly became a hot topic, with many players criticizing Riot’s attention to detail. Riot seems to be on winter break and only officially returns on January 5. Fans hope they will focus more on game content. It feels like Riot’s current priority is making more elaborate skins and raising prices to maximize sales. Of course, this maintenance might also be due to an unexpected internal bug; the exact cause remains unclear.

Farewell thoughts

The certificate expiration definitely required an update, and the timing was suspiciously close, prompting players to connect the dots. Riot hasn’t explained the reason in the maintenance notice. How many games last ten years? The fact that League’s popularity remains so high shows fans’ passion is strong. Hopefully, the official won’t dampen this enthusiasm.

What do you all think about this situation?