League of Legends' maligned client is getting a revamp

(Image credit: Riot Games)

To put it mildly, people don't seem to like the League of Legends client. So it's welcome news that Riot Games has announced a 'Client Cleanup Campaign', which is just a slightly over-formal way of saying that they're going to fix it.

The campaign appears to be pretty thorough, with Riot's announcement admitting that the client "is not in great shape". It cites bugs, lag, memory leaks, crashes and freezes as some of the biggest concerns, and yes, they are all very big and annoying problems. 

It's a pretty long post, with a lot of data provided. But the most important points are as follows: the "specific long-term targets" are to lower boostrap time (how long it takes to boot the client) to about 15 seconds, which Riot claims is about "three and four times faster" than it is at the moment. Meanwhile, champion select lock-in response times should become about eight times faster.

But neither of these things are bugs per se, but there's method in Riot's madness. "Why prioritize these two things first? The reason is that, in the process of addressing bootstrap time and champ select lock-in time, we're going to be cleaning up and reworking certain fundamental aspects of the client's architecture. We believe that we'll be able to opportunistically address bugs, memory leaks, and crashes while pursuing these targets".

If you'd like to read the very thorough post for yourself, here it is. It's unlikely you missed it, but in case you did, Riot unveiled its brand new first-person shooter today.

Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.

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