Why League of Legends' ARAM Mode Is Still Enabled With the Dash Bug

League of Legends has a serious ARAM bug that's getting quite a bit of attention, but it's one that Riot Games is and has been working on.

The bug is one that most ARAM players might've seen by now if you've played a game on the Howling Abyss with at least one champion on either team that has a dash. Even if none of the 10 champions somehow have a dash, the bug also affects the Mark and Dash Summoner Spells that are exclusive to the game mode as well, two of the most defining features that can't be used correctly due to the bug. When champions use any kind of targeted dash that sends them towards someone else, their model appears to rubberband back and forth before eventually appearing next to the target. It makes it incredibly difficult to react to opponent's dashes with the gif below from a recent Reddit thread about the issue bringing attention to the problem and showing what happens.

While Talon's one champion who you certainly want to keep track of if he's dashing to you, the bug is affecting pretty much any champion who has a targeted dash or uses the Mark and Dash spells. It's been around for a while now, yet ARAM is still enabled for everyone to play.

It's an issue that's got some players wondering whether the bug has been left alone because ARAM is often viewed as a more casual game mode with some suggesting that if this was happening in a Summoner's Rift game, it'd be fixed immediately. Amid questions regarding why ARAM is still enabled despite the bug's prevalence, Riot Games' Riot Bazaam offered an explanation to say that Riot did consider disabling ARAM but decided against it.

"WRT disabling aram-- When the bug was discovered, we did have that conversation. Based on player feedback and the number of players still choosing to play aram in spite of the bug, we made the judgement call that it would be more painful to stop you from playing at all than to keep it running with some gamebreaking jank," Riot Bazaam said. "This isn't to try and diminish how much this sucks btw-- it's a clusterfuck and it feels like shit. But, in this case we didn't want to take away your chance to play some league if you're an aram main or looking for a quick game. (Side note about disabling Mark-- so many champions have targeted dashes, and Mark is so important for tanks and assassins, we felt this would put ARAM in an even worse spot)."

The Rioter also dispelled any suggestions that Riot doesn't care as much about ARAM by saying that the team has been working on fixing the bug "since day one" and that they're pulling team members from other projects to fix the bug and restore ARAM to it's normal state.