U.S government bans League of Legends in Syria

Virtual worlds are no longer safe from political conflicts as before, and League of Legends is the lastest victim of US sanctions on the Syrian Arab Republic

Syrian League of Legends players were surprised this morning that their game wouldn’t connect, and a new message told them why. A new ban has been imposed in accordance to the laws and legislation of the United States government, and Riot Games being a company in California made it so it was forced to suspend all transactions with both Iran and Syria, following the recent escalation on the international scene.

The decision to tighten sanctions comes after a US drone was shot down at the Iranian border last weekend, but we could not have expected League of Legends to join the embargoed e-services list, especially after keeping it available for a long period of time despite the ban on other US games such as Overwatch and Rocket League, as well as some important services like Blizzard.net, Google Play and Paypal.

However, hope may not yet have been lost for players, who were quick to try out several VPN services to enter the game and resume playing bypassing the geographical ban of the servers. Unfortunately, this temporary solution will no doubt affect the quality of the connection, adding an extra burden to the gameplay that wasn’t perfect to start with due to high latency and lag.

Riot Games says that the ban will not be permanent, and the team will be happy to restore access to these countries as soon as the ban is lifted by the US administration. Meanwhile, League of Legends, joins Overwatch, Rocket League, Call of Duty, Apex Legends and more in the list of banned online games, as efforts continue to find twisted ways to bypass the unfair ban on the players who are perhaps the biggest victim of these political arm-twisting stance.