Unforeseen problems are bound to occur during massive tournaments like the League of Legends World Championship, but one has to wonder if an issue this large could have been prevented. On Sunday, Riot Games announced that Gragas, one of the three most picked jungle champions on the patch which the tournament is being played, will be disabled for the remainder of the event.

The ban comes as a result of a bug that occurred in the second game of EDward Gaming and Fnatic's quarterfinals bout, resulting in a remake. When the bug occurs, the Gragas player is unable to cast his Q ability, Barrel Roll, for the remainder of a game if the second part of the ability won’t trigger. This problem also affects Lux and Ziggs, so those champions have been disabled as well, but, unlike Gragas, they haven’t been played at the World Championship.

Gragas has been picked or banned in 33 of 63 games this Worlds, and is among the top 12 most picked or banned champions in the entire event. Most games have featured two of Elise, Rek’Sai, or Gragas. Gragas’ strong disengage ultimate makes him extremely useful in a variety of compositions, as very few champions in the meta have disengage abilities. Hyper carries without escape abilities like Jinx or Kog’Maw often benefit from a Gragas in the jungle. Gragas also has a strong engage tool, can be used in poke and siege compositions, and scales incredibly well for late game team fighting.

Four teams remain in the World Championship, and of the four remaining teams, Europe's Origen has favored Gragas the most. Origen have picked Gragas in four of their 10 games this tournament. Fnatic's jungler, Reignover, has picked Gragas the second most often in two of his nine games. SK Telecom T1's bengi has picked Gragas once, and KOO Tigers' Hojin hasn’t picked Gragas at all.

Origen are additionally impacted by Gragas’ elimination as the team tends to play more around their AD Carry than the other four teams. Niels has played Kalista, Jinx, Kog’Maw, and Sivir and has the third highest gold share of any player in the tournament on average at 28.1% (behind imp and Doublelift) and does the fourth highest percentage of team damage at 33.3% (behind Deft, NL, and Bjergsen). Though Niels’ positioning has been very strong, the peel Gragas brings with his kit definitely synergizes well with the team’s playstyle.

Origen are the team that have used Gragas the most and are most likely to create compositions that benefit from Gragas’ disengage, but they won’t be the only ones affected. Elise and Rek’Sai are the other clear Tier 1 jungle picks, and it’s likely that every match going forward will see both of them: Elise first picked on blue side, and Rek’Sai on red. Rek’Sai’s lack of ranged abilities makes it more difficult to create siege compositions with her, which can limit the compositions that can be run on red side.

It also creates a possible blue side strategy of banning Rek'Sai or Elise and first picking the other. Regardless, it seems a possible increase in blue side advantage could result from the Gragas ban. As of right now, blue side has an already alarming 61.9% win rate at the World Championship.

Amazing, Origen's jungler and primary Gragas player

When Rek’Sai and Elise are not available, however, more options can come into play. A team like Origen may consider using Tahm Kench jungle. Despite low pressure early game and more of a counterganking style, Tahm Kench provides safety for an ADC and scales well for team fights. Nunu is also a possible option for team fighting, scaling, and an AD Carry-centric style. SK Telecom T1’s bengi is a known Nunu player as well.

Hojin and bengi may also favor the likes of Evelynn, but Lee Sin is the obvious pick. Some speculated Lee Sin would see more play, but he’s countered pretty easily by Rek’Sai, Gragas, and Elise. Since it's easier to eliminate all three from play, Lee Sin might become more attractive.

Reignover is probably the jungler least likely to play Lee Sin, but he has played his fair share of Olaf in the past, and he may opt for that pick when pressed. Rengar is also not out of the question for Reignover.

The largest gameplay impact will be fewer hyper carry picks or red side siege compositions. Another option, however, is an increase in Viktor’s red side pick rate, as Viktor provides a nice zoning threat and reasonable disengage as well as siege options. So far, Viktor has been picked in around 24% of games at the World Championship.

These are not insignificant changes to gameplay and could seriously impact the preparations already made by teams heading to Brussels for the semifinals. These problems not only unfairly affect one competitor over the others (Origen), but also are likely to unfairly affect teams playing on one side of the rift over another.

In Riot’s announcement, they mentioned that they wanted to explore the bug in more detail after the incident in Fnatic and EDward Gaming's match before making the decision to ban Gragas. After further investigation, they found that the bug is more common than initially anticipated.

There is allegedly a list of known bugs in the game given to players prior to events so they can avoid them and avoid situations where a remake is necessary. The Gragas bug was known before the event began, but was assumed to occur only rarely. Given that it only took a day of additional investigation to discover that this is not the case and the champion has been a popular jungle pick for most of 2015, one wonders if due diligence was done prior to the tournament to ensure the risk of problems occurring was small.

As no competitive games were played on Patch 5.17 or 5.18, and only China played matches on 5.16, one might speculate that Riot Games would try to make sure they were fully informed regarding bugs affecting popular champions. Without further information, I won’t pass judgment on Riot, but I also cannot say that they should remain free of criticism. Only banning Gragas this far into the World Championship is a major oversight and a failing in the administration of an otherwise enjoyable event.

Bugs in general—whether small or potentially result-changing like this one—have been a recurring problem in League of Legends events. Though no game is free of glitches, frequent patching could also be a source of problems going unchecked. It's time to begin asking what more can be done about problems with the game itself affecting the quality of competition.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore eSports. You can follow her on Twitter.