Team Liquid has decided the second night of the League of Legends World Championship is the perfect time to release a fake music video — and they fooled plenty of fans. They had posted a tweet featuring a link to the video, produced by 1Up Studios, with the caption, “The moment you’ve been waiting for – Listen to BURN now.” Thousands of viewers have watched this video thinking that it is an official Riot Games production, when indeed — it is not.
The production titled “Burn” begins with an anime-like intro of red and white sparks over a scene of black mountains, eventually showing a silhouette of League Of Legends broadcaster Ovilee. As she appears in her gold-colored glasses, she begins to sing: “Its time for League Worlds now, let’s sh*t-talk group D.” Viewers already knew how snarky these lyrics were going to be. Towards the end of the video, Ovilee is dressed in clothing that reflects the K/DA theme from last year’s 2018 theme song.
Reaction to the Team Liquid video and the wait for the real thing
Team Liquid’s Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng gave his honest opinion on his thousand-viewer Twitch stream. He opened the video on his screen and played a few seconds of it while leaning back on his chair. As he paused the clip, tabbing into his game’s loading screen, he remarked that he “really didn’t want to watch this… because that is garbage.” He also mentioned that it was a “cringe” video. It doesn’t seem that the Team Liquid players knew about the video beforehand, but none of his teammates have commented on it as of yet.
This prank video came as a surprise today to plenty of League of Legends players. Fans have been hoping for a new annual Worlds anthem ever since the 2019 World Championship Orchestral Theme Song was released via YouTube on Sept. 19. As Riot recently tweeted that the official theme song is “not quite ready yet,” fans have been feeling pretty annoyed.
It's not quite ready yet, I'm afraid, but we'll post when we have it!
— League of Legends // UK, IE & Nordics (@LoLUKN) September 30, 2019
The past few years have provided some very successful and catchy World Championship tracks. Last year, Riot released the 2018 theme song “RISE,” sporting over 149 million views. In the same year, Riot also surprised fans with virtual K-pop girl group K/DA performing “POP/STARS.” This was one of League of Legends‘ most record-breaking tunes with over 267 million YouTube views.
Great job, Team Liquid and Ovilee — you entertained fans, pumped up the haters, and trolled those eagerly waiting to jam out to the next Worlds theme.
Let’s keep hoping for Riot to release a new anthem that hypes up the importance of the World Championship. They already released new physical merchandise that also gives players in-game rewards, so it seems they’re slowly — but surely — grinding out some goods for their dedicated fans.
