According to Eurogamer.net, the popular MOBA League of Legends was briefly rendered unplayable because Riot Games failed to renew the game’s digital certificate. This certificate, which verifies the program’s authenticity, was valid from January 7, 2016, until its expiration on January 4, 2026. As clocks hit that date globally, the game became unbootable for players. Some resourceful fans discovered a workaround by manually setting their system clocks back to a date before the expiration, tricking the game into launching. The issue has now been fixed by Riot, but it highlights a surprisingly common point of failure for digital services.
The House of Cards Problem
Here’s the thing: this is a gloriously simple and utterly preventable IT blunder. Digital certificates are like the expiration dates on a driver’s license. They’re a fundamental part of the trust system that secures our software, but they’re also a single point of failure that requires proactive management. And when you forget, everything just… stops. It’s not just Riot. A Digicert survey last year found nearly half of companies had an outage due to a cert expiring. Remember that weird ‘Device Not Supported’ error on Steam Deck a while back? Yep, that was a certificate bug too. It’s the digital equivalent of forgetting to pay the electric bill.
Context at a Weird Time
So this silly certificate snafu happens at a pretty pivotal moment for Riot and LoL. The game is on the brink of a massive overhaul, with a whole new version slated for 2027. They’re also rolling out a new seasonal structure to keep players engaged. But all this “revitalization” comes after a brutal 2024 where Riot conducted two major waves of layoffs, citing unsustainable costs and “no room for experimentation or failure.” Ironic, isn’t it? This certificate lapse is exactly the kind of unforced error that can happen when teams are stretched thin or processes break down. It makes you wonder about the state of their backend ops.
The Manual Clock Hack
The player-discovered workaround is the funniest part. Turning your system clock back is such a beautifully janky, early-2000s style fix. It’s pure “have you tried turning it off and on again?” energy. But it also reveals something about how the game client was checking the cert—probably just doing a simple date comparison locally rather than a more robust server-side validation. That trick, while clever, is a band-aid that could break other time-sensitive apps on your PC. It’s a testament to player dedication, but also a sign of a fragile system. Basically, the community patched the game before the developers could. That’s both impressive and a little embarrassing for Riot.
