Riot Games, the company that published one of the world's most popular eSports video games League of Legends (LOL), on Thursday night announced the cancelation of this year's LOL Mid-Season Invitational (MSL) because of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

"The Global League of Legends Esports team has been working hard over the past few months to react to these changes, support our regional leagues as they have successfully pivoted to online competition, and try to preserve our next big international competition, the Mid-Season Invitational. One outcome of this hard work was the decision to delay MSI from May to July with the hope that the crisis would be waning, travel restrictions would come down, and we could deliver an exceptional MSI," said John Needham, the Global Head of LOL eSports in an official statement.

"Based on the modeling of our external risk advisors, however, it appears highly unlikely that either the global spread/impact of COVID-19 or the restrictive travel and public gathering policies responding to the crisis will abate significantly by the time of MSI's current planned dates (July 3-19). With this model plus input from health authorities, local governments, regional leagues and teams, travel experts, and other stakeholders, we have made the difficult decision to not hold MSI in 2020. We believe this decision was necessary to ensure the health and safety of the players, teams, crew, partners, media, and fans."

Meanwhile, Riot Games also had some good news for LOL fans in Chinese mainland and Europe: In the coming LOL World Championship (S10) in China, both the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) and the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) can send four teams to the top event.

The LPL and the LEC "are currently ranked first and second based on their performance in international competitions over the past two years" and thus "will qualify four teams for the World Championship."

Meanwhile, the Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) will also receive an extra seed thanks to their remarkable performance in the previous MSI competitions.