The League of Legends servers are down with numerous players speculating on what’s causing the issues. From a Reddit thread online it appears that some players are speculating that the servers are down due to DDOS attacks and expired certifications. What happens is when players click the “play” button in the Riot Client, it shows the League of Legends title show up on the monitor; however, it stays stuck until the client closes League of Legends again.
Current Status
1/4/26 – 1:31 PM PST – The servers are still currently down. League of Legends staff member Riot Flixxy responded to the Reddit thread started by user RealLbZ. The Riot employee stated they appreciated the report and are working on the issue. Most likely contacting IT support to assist with the server issues. Additionally over 8,000 people reported that the servers are down on DownDetector. Most comments want the servers back up as the end of the ranked season is nearby which occurs on the January 7th, 2026.
The original Reddit thread post was at 12:15 PM PST, League of Legends reported the servers are down at 12:41 PM PST, and Ranked ques were disabled at 12:56 PM PST.
1/4/26 – 4:02 PM PST – Servers are still currently down. You are able to login if you change your system date/time to yesterday 1/3/26. Make sure to change it back once a fix goes live so you don’t miss any important deadlines, goals, or appointments.
1/4/26 -5:44 PM PST – It appears a hotfix has fixed the server. You are now able to log back on after applying a critical update.
Player Speculation
Reddit user Jessica_Tallon commented on the thread reporting they found something in their research posted underneath. This is causing people to speculate online that an expired SSL certification has caused this much commotion and failure for people to log into the game. I changed the IP information to “z’s” just in case btw. One other Reddit user known as pm_your_nsfw_pics_ stated that this was not the first time League of Legends had an issue like this posting this 10 year old Reddit Thread.
RemotingServer: Accepted new connection from zzz.z.z.z:zzzz. 000005.860| OKAY| RemotingServer: Closing connection from zzz.z.z.z:zzzz. 000005.860| OKAY| RemotingServer: Accepted new connection from zzz.z.z.z:zzzz. 000005.872| OKAY| SecureSocketTransport: Failed to accept SSL connection. SSL_accept returned: error:14094415:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert certificate expired 000005.872| OKAY| RemotingServer: Closing connection from zzz.z.z.z:zzzz. 000005.927| OKAY| RemotingServer: Accepted new connection from zzz.z.z.z:zzzz. 000005.928| OKAY| SecureSocketTransport: Failed to accept SSL connection. SSL_accept returned: error:14094415:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert certificate expired
Other players have also stated that many other servers are down including League of Legends of course, but also Counter Strike 2 plus World of Warcraft (WoW). After doing some minimal research on the DownDetector website it appears people have reported that CS2 servers were down at around 12:00 PM PST and WoW servers were down at 12:55 PM PST. This could potentially be a major cyber security attack on game company servers or it can be the servers’ provider went down. Who knows?
Additional Information
Do not try uninstalling the game or client as players have reported that they were not able to reinstall anything. People have also reported the League of Legends servers are working in China which means their servers were most likely not targeted or affected during this attack. However, that has not been confirmed in any way, shape, or form.
One of my most favorite comments was from Reddit user dickiesbbq who wrote “$20 billion company can’t provide a half-decent client for its players.”
Lastly, if you check the server status on the League of Legends website, it will show no recent issues or events to report. Which is very odd. Maybe their website editor is on vacation.
Personally, I would just wait for the issue to be resolved by the game’s company rather than sneak into it. Also, don’t uninstall anything. Simply just wait for the team to fix the issue. Since you have free time due to not being able to que for games you can check out our other articles including 5 steps to save League of Legends or Is League of Legends Dying.