League of Legends, one of the biggest games in the world, became inaccessible to millions of players this week due to a surprisingly simple error. The developer Riot Games simply forgot to renew the game’s digital certificate, which expired in the early hours of last Sunday, January 4, 2026. As a result, the title, which has a huge fan base in Brazil and worldwide, became unable to start, catching the community by surprise with a problem that was not technical, but administrative.
The incident, although brief, shows how even industry giants are subject to human error. The official solution from Riot came a few hours later, but in the meantime, the cleverest players found a homemade workaround to bypass the block. They discovered that by changing the PC operating system’s date to a day before January 3, they could start the game normally, bypassing the expired certificate verification.
The curious timing and the future of LoL
This lapse occurs at a crucial moment for the franchise. Riot Games is actively working on a massive overhaul of the MOBA, nicknamed “League Next” and scheduled for release in 2027. Thus, the question remains whether attention to the operational details of the current game may have been neglected amid preparations for this major evolution. The failure, however, has been fully resolved and League of Legends is operational again.
Despite the quick fix, the episode went viral on social media, generating memes and much discussion within the community. The case serves as an unusual reminder of how the digital infrastructure that supports our favorite games, often seen as robust and infallible, depends on basic processes and is subject to human error. The good news is that, with service restored, Brazilian players can already return to matches on Summoner’s Rift.
