Remember the function in what’s now known as the Legacy Client — the client that players had before the current one — where players could spectate high-elo games? Amid the featured in-shop items, your friends list, and some recent League of Legends news, a corner of the client was reserved for showing a couple of high-elo matches that were going on currently so that players could take a peek at how the high-ranking players played. The champions being played would also be previewed so you could scope out matchups that you wanted to get help with.
When the transition was made over to the current client, spectating these games wasn’t one of the features that made the crossover. That didn’t stop players from asking for it though, and the request for high-elo spectate pops up frequently on both the League boards and in other online communities. One of many examples of this request can be seen in the Reddit post that the picture below comes from, in case you need a reminder as to what the spectate option looked like or if you weren’t around League at the time to take advantage of it.
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Despite all the requests for the function, Riot Games still isn’t prioritizing the function. In a recent Ask Riot update, they reaffirmed the explanation from their big client update post that voiced their stance on high-elo spectating:
“The ability to spectate high-elo games was removed from the legacy client early in 2016—way before the client update beta—because of a security vulnerability involving the spectator service,” Riot Cactopus quoted in his answer. “This isn’t something we think we can solve immediately, but we are considering tackling this in other ways (perhaps by offering downloadable replays of other players’ games).”
However, the Rioter closed his response by saying that while it’s still not something that they’re prioritizing with the new client, it’s not something they’ve forgotten. Cactopus finished his comments on the spectate function by saying that the team was still looking into a way that they could bring the high-elo spectating back in some form.
