Riot Games has announced that the removal of public replays in League of Legends has been delayed until Patch 26.21.
LoL Patch 26.20 was released yesterday and came with the controversial announcement that players could now only download their own replays.
Content creators and many players reacted furiously as this limited access to pro players’ matches, which many use as a learning resource.
However, Riot is still persisting with this change, though they claim that Rioters are working on a solution for creators and coaches who rely on replays.
Why Is Riot Privating LoL Replays?
Riot announced that soon, players will only be able to access replays from matches they played in.
Other players will no longer be able to download someone else’s replays, and third-party apps & sites will lose access to replay downloads entirely.
Riot claims that this change is being made to fix a security vulnerability that was being exploited to “build unauthorized tools around League game data.”
LoL content creator Necrit claims that he did some digging and discovered why Riot is taking such drastic action:
“It seems like the issue is that people are vibecoding scripts that scrape the data off of 1000s of public replays to then vibecode bots that learns off of them… Why does AI ruin literally everything?”
If these claims are true, it would mean that third-party websites are using replays to train AIs to create bot players and perhaps other cheating tools such as scripters.
Creators Reaction to Private LoL Replays
There were fears that many content creators’ channels would die overnight, including Drew ‘Midbeast’ Timbs, who primarily reacts to replays in his videos.
The Australian content creator, who has over 500k YouTube subscribers, uploaded a video saying goodbye to his viewers.
“I don’t care if I get paid for this thing. I just like watching other players, watching what they do on their champions and telling you guys about it.
“Riot completely stripped that overnight. No more Faker replays, no more Beifeng replays, absolutely nothing. All we can really do is watch streams and this channel, if you have to rely on that, is cooked.”
And G2 Esports coach Jonas ‘Memento’ Elmarghichi explained why it would affect the next generation of esports pros:
“This is kinda sad, I remember 10 years ago when I wanted to go pro, one of my main tools was to watch other pro players’ solo Q games to learn from them/
“It’s also one of the main ways to improve, the younger generation should have access to the same tools.”
And another content creator in Skin Spotlights criticised Riot for repeatedly making major changes in patch notes without prior notice:
“Riot are just doing weird changes while not really explaining properly why…. Feels so trash losing access to watching random replays, at least let me still grab replays from my friends….”
Other major changes Riot have suddenly added this year include updating minion aggro and adding last-hit indicators to Ranked.
What do you think of Riot’s proposed replay system changes? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord.
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An esports journalist for nine years with a focus on LoL Jack has written for national newspapers, interviewed major names, and driven people mad with puns. He's most proud of…
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