Wild Rift: Dev explains why it’s taking so long to launch beta servers in India, North America, and South America

Image Credits: Riot Games

Riot Games’ League of Legends-based mobile game, Wild Rift, has seen unprecedented hurdles during its development phase.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the biggest setback for the Wild Rift devs team. And a game supposed to have its beta servers up and running by the first half of 2020 is now struggling to launch the region-specific open beta servers.

For now, the following countries will have their Wild Rift open beta servers active in the first phase (the open beta access for these regions is already available):

  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • South Korea
  • Thailand
  • Brunei
  • Cambodia
  • Laos
  • Myanmar
  • Timor-Leste

The second phase (December) will see these countries getting their Wild Rift open beta access:

  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • North Africa
  • Oceania
  • Russia
  • Taiwan
  • Turkey
  • Vietnam

The three major regions of North America, South America, and India have been left out in the initial two phases and will be getting their Wild Rift open beta servers and access in 2021. North America will be getting it during the Spring of next year, with the rest to follow soon after.

All these regions have incredibly big and robust player bases when it comes to mobile gaming. Especially in a PUBG Mobile banned nation like India, a title like Wild Rift can indeed gain an unprecedented amount of success.

Much of the Wild Rift fan base feels that the delays by Riot are uncalled for, and there has been much criticism thrown at the devs for not being able to adhere to their initial promise.

However, Michael Chow, the Executive Producer of Riot Games, took to Twitter to talk about the difficulties that the Wild Rift devs team has been facing and why that has led to a delay in server the launch.

Wild Rift dev talks about open beta launch delays in India, NA, and South America

In a recent tweet, Michael Chow discussed some of the factors that have led to the Wild Rift open beta servers being postponed.

He said:

“2020 has turned out to be an incredibly tough year for all of us. And it has presented a lot of challenges for launching any new game, let alone a global competitive mobile game with some very unprecedented server and infrastructure needs.”
“And the ongoing state of COVID with its continued impact on the global landscape around us is bringing brand new technical constraints, and complicating each region’s own unique set of challenges and requirements.”

The pandemic has made it incredibly challenging for Wild Rift to have a worldwide launch, and the challenges for each region seem to be unique, requiring their own set of solutions.

Michael Chow continued:

“Meanwhile, it (COVID-19) has us grounded and unable to travel, making it impossible to do what we normally do to set up new server sites and server locations. Plus a couple of other dozen crazy 2020 things. But the net result is this. It has become a much more complex and multifaceted problem to bring service to your regions (India, NA, and South America) in particular… rushing this is not going to give you the experience that you deserve.”

The technical issues that the Wild Rift developers are facing amidst a pandemic are indeed severe. And fans from India, North America, and South America will need to have a bit more patience before they finally get their hands on this title.