TL;DR
- Riot’s six-month client cleanup campaign faces unexpected technical challenges including a broken Affinity system
- The client currently loads all plugins due to 2018 system failure, severely impacting launch times
- Despite progress reducing plugins and ember apps, new bugs have been discovered during the process
- European servers show significant instability while player growth strains infrastructure
- Phase two focusing on champion selection improvements awaits successful completion of initial fixes
League of Legends developer Riot Games has revealed both progress and unexpected complications in their ongoing Client Cleanup Campaign, highlighting the complexity of modern gaming infrastructure maintenance.
Originally launched in March, this ambitious six-month technical overhaul targets the notoriously problematic League of Legends client through a structured two-phase approach. The initial phase concentrates on bootstrap time reduction—specifically decreasing how long the client takes to initialize and become operational. Phase two will address responsiveness within the champion selection interface, a critical pain point for competitive players.
To accomplish these performance goals, Riot’s engineering team must systematically reduce plugin and ember application dependencies within the codebase. Plugins serve as modular components that compartmentalize client functionality, while ember applications power the user interface framework that players interact with directly.
Riot Games finds problems in LoL client
As Riot engineers progressed through phase one implementation, they encountered several unforeseen technical complications that have complicated their original timeline.
The Affinity management system—a critical component integrated into the client architecture—functions as an intelligent plugin selector that determines which modules must load during the initialization sequence. This system experienced a critical failure sometime during 2018, resulting in the client now activating every available plugin during startup, which dramatically increases bootstrap duration. Complete replacement of the Affinity infrastructure represents the only viable solution, though Riot developers acknowledge this comprehensive rewrite will require substantial development time.
Despite the Affinity system complications, Riot maintains they’re making meaningful forward progress with significant client code optimizations. The development team has successfully eliminated numerous plugins and ember applications from the core codebase. However, this optimization process revealed additional previously undetected bugs affecting client stability and performance.
Compounding the technical challenges, Riot confronts infrastructure strain from unprecedented player growth rates. Daily user influx continues to accelerate, prompting considerations for server architecture modifications to accommodate this expanding player base while maintaining service quality.
Current server infrastructure, particularly European data centers, demonstrates concerning volatility with frequent unexplained service interruptions. This instability directly contradicts the campaign’s objectives of improved user experience, creating additional pressure on the development timeline.
Once Riot achieves satisfactory results from their current optimization efforts, development focus will shift to phase two implementation while concurrently addressing newly identified software defects.
At the two-month milestone, the Client Cleanup Campaign shows promising technical improvements despite slower-than-anticipated progress. However, declaring the initiative successful remains premature given the ongoing server instability and recently discovered technical complications. The European server infrastructure particularly requires immediate attention, as consistent unexplained outages continue to frustrate the regional player community.
Action Checklist
- Monitor client load times before and after patches to track actual performance changes
- Report unexplained client crashes or freezes with specific error codes through official channels
- Document European server outage patterns including time, duration, and error messages
- Clear client cache monthly to mitigate accumulated plugin conflicts and performance degradation
No reproduction without permission：Game Guides Online » Riot has found even more problems while fixing buggy League client Riot Games faces unexpected technical challenges while attempting to fix League of Legends' problematic client performance