League of Legends' Clash Launch Has Been Cancelled

The launch of League of Legends' new Clash game mode that was supposed to happen this weekend has been cancelled due to technical difficulties.

Clash is the new tournament game mode that allows players to compete similarly to how the pros do on stage, all from the comfort of their homes. After building teams and using the new drafting and scouting tools that have been implemented for Clash, teams would face off against each other in brackets that grow larger the further you progress. After spending time in beta testing, the first official tournament was supposed to kick off today prior to Riot Games announcing that it's been postponed to a later date.

The first players to find out were those in Europe, specifically in the EUW and EUNE servers. Riot Games shared the news through the League of Legends EU Twitter account that today's games had been cancelled and that players' Clash tickets used as an admission fee would be refunded. The plan then was to start the tournament on Saturday as opposed to today with the beginning featuring an eight-team bracket, but tweets that came later confirmed that the Clash tournament wouldn't start this weekend after all.

Clash Update: as much as it pains us to make this call, we've decided to cancel the entirety of this weekend's Clash tournament in EU due to critical technical issues. We know many of you arranged your weekend schedules around the tournament and we're sorry to let you down. (1/2)

— League of Legends EU (@loleu) May 25, 2018

You will get any spent tickets back. The team is working hard to get things back on track and there will likely be Clash tests in certain regions around the world as we explore fixes, but Clash weekend 1 is officially cancelled here in Europe. Clash is down, but not out. (2/2)

— League of Legends EU (@loleu) May 25, 2018

North American players' weekend Clash plans fared no better. Around the same time that the EU Twitter account confirmed there'd be no Clash tournament in the region this weekend, a post on the North American League of Legends boards confirmed the same for players in the States.

"We are sorry to tell you that we've decided to cancel this weekend's Clash launch due to unexpected technical issues that appeared when rolling it out across regions earlier today. We want your first play through of Clash to be as amazing as possible, but unfortunately we are not confident in the event experience that you and your teams would have had."

A new launch date for the first Clash tournament hasn't been announced yet, but all players who submitted a ticket to get into the competition can expect to have their tickets refunded to their accounts to be used when the launch officially happens.