Thousands of League of Legends (LoL) players worldwide experienced a major service disruption on January 4, leaving many unable to log in or launch the game. At the height of the outage, more than 7,000 reports were recorded on Downdetector, with approximately 81 percent related to game launch failures. Other users reported login delays and unexpected server disconnects, while search terms such as “League of Legends down” trended across social media platforms during the incident.
Players reported a range of issues, including frozen clients, sudden disconnections, and interrupted matches across ranked games, casual modes, and Teamfight Tactics. The outage affected multiple regions, with widespread reports from EU West, North America, and the Philippines, highlighting the global scope of the disruption.
Riot Games acknowledged the issue shortly after reports began to surface. In a post on X, the company stated: “We’re aware of an issue that’s impacting games and preventing some players from logging in. Ranked queues are temporarily disabled while we work on a fix. Thanks for your patience.” Despite the acknowledgment, Riot’s official service status page did not initially display a major outage notice, prompting many players to rely on community platforms such as Downdetector, Reddit, and X for real-time updates.
Early on, some players believed the problem was limited to their own systems and attempted basic troubleshooting steps, including restarting their computers. However, these efforts proved ineffective. Riot’s official support documentation notes that login issues can sometimes occur when a computer rejects security certificates or when system time is not properly synchronized. In such cases, Riot recommends syncing the device’s clock or using the Hextech Repair Tool for Windows users.
Speculation regarding the root cause intensified after LPL Funclub suggested on X that the outage may have been triggered by an expired SSL certificate. A shared screenshot indicated that the certificate in question was issued on January 7, 2016, and expired on January 4, 2026, at 9:03:33 p.m. While Riot Games has not confirmed this explanation, similar incidents have occurred in the past. In both 2022 and 2023, expired SSL certificates affecting the game’s Data Dragon API caused service disruptions for developers and third-party tools, which were resolved after Riot renewed the certificates, according to public bug reports on GitHub.
As of writing, Riot Games has not released an official statement confirming the cause of the January 4 outage, nor has it provided a timeline for the full restoration of services.
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