Riot also working on dedicated European League of Legends network

League of Legends is to receive a dedicated European network, mirroring that planned for the US.

Developer Riot revealed its American network plans earlier this month and has now confirmed that an EU project is also underway.

The recent launch of an Amsterdam datacentre and changes to its Frankfurt datacentre – and the completion of a high-speed private link between them – means that the game apparently already has “over 500 direct connections with ISPs throughout Europe”, leading to already improved network performance for the game.

“Our goal is to extend Riot’s presence in regions affected by these limitations in order to improve the player experience and minimise connection difficulties,” an update read. “Instead of middleman backbone providers getting ISP traffic to us, we will be building direct connections to the ISPs that LoL players use, and then announce to these ISPs: feel free to use Riot’s backbone for your customers playing LoL.

“Since our backbone is solely dedicated to League traffic, this should improve the experience for a vast majority of player traffic as it leaves an ISP on its way to Riot.

“We’ve already begun designing and building out our own physical infrastructure. So far we’ve analysed in-game networking stats, purchased the necessary equipment and finalised discussions with long haul circuit providers. This new backbone will span multiple datacenters across Europe and the infrastructure will be fully managed by our dedicated team. We’re also hiring new engineers to help us level up this endeavour.”

Riot added that owing to the large numbers of ISPs it is speaking to it cannot give any precise dates, saying: “While we prioritize our efforts where we see the most player pain, the realities of how telecoms and ISPs work mean that our actual schedule is driven by lots of factors.”