KUALA LUMPUR: This is the nightmare of eSports gamers - bad Internet connection.
That was what happened at the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) M5 World Championship at the Jio Space Arena in Petaling Jaya on Friday.
To the disappointment of the organisers and gamers, the competition had to be postponed after much delay on the day.
The Wild Card Group A match between Malaysian heavyweights, Team SMG and 4Merical Esports of Nepal was scheduled for 8pm, Friday, but it could not proceed due to Internet issues.
The match was postponed to 11.30pm, but eventually it had to be postponed to Saturday because of Internet issues again.
Earlier, a similar problem saw the 4pm Group A match between Saudi Arabia's Falcon and Laos' Nightmare Esports finishing only at around 10pm with the Laotians winning 2-1.
The next match, between KeepBest Gaming of China and Umbrella Squad of the United States in Group B, which was scheduled for 6pm was delayed to 9.30pm.
However, the problem persisted, forcing the organisers to reschedule the match to Saturday with SMG taking on 4Merical at noon. The Malaysians will wrap up their Group A campaign against the Falcons at 4pm.
The organisers said: "There was a network interference that was attributed to us fixing the IP to a static setting.
"We enlisted the help of our technicians and diagnosed the issue, and the ping is stable now. We are sorry to the online and offline audiences, and we have issued out in-game rewards as a compensation to our players."
SMG need to finish in the top two in their group to qualify for the crossover round on Sunday. The top two teams from the crossover will qualify for the M5 World Championship in Manila from Dec 2-12.
The M5 World Championship is the biggest MLBB eSports event of the year with 16 international teams competing for a total prize of US$900,000 (RM4.18mil) and the title of the best global MLBB squad.