Riot Games is also being “stoned” for being suspected of intentionally covering up the referee’s mistake, thereby indirectly making Oner fiercely criticized in the League of Legends community.
A few minutes ago, the match between T1 and HLE ended with a 2-1 victory for T1. But for gamers watching live, this is an extremely long game with a lot of trouble around game bugs.
The situation of the Red buff dispute and the Oner’s advantage in game 3.
More specifically, in the 4-5 minutes of game 3, Oner’s Xin Zhao had one more use of Smite and gained an advantage over the opponent. Many viewers think that T1’s jungler took advantage of this game error on purpose, even many Korean fans are calling out Oner as a cheater on League of Legends forums.
Oner was heavily criticized right after game 3 ended.
As soon as the match ended, Oner had to post a story on Instagram to explain that:
“I didn’t take advantage of the game bug in game 3. I was too focused on the game, by 4-5 minutes of the game I found myself getting another Smite. I thought it was a bit strange and I told the referee about twice, but they didn’t say anything so I kept playing.” – Oner shared about game errors in game 3.
When he saw the pressure from the community that Oner had to bear, the CEO of T1 also posted an article on Twitter about this:
“It is horrible that Oner has to defend himself about it, while Riot Games can simply state that what happened was not Oner’s fault and Oner tried to speak out about this issue during the game. We support Oner 1000% and I hope the community does too.” – CEO T1 spoke out in defense of the jungler born in 2002.
T1 CEO defended his player.
After seeing these explanatory posts, the community began to split into different opinions. Among them, there are many people who criticize Riot Games for “covering up” the referee’s mistake and indirectly letting Oner take the blame.
See also: T1 won hard against HLE because of squad testing in LCK Summer 2022