League of Legends: Wild Rift launches its mobile beta in Asia while the Americas and India are left waiting until 2021

League of Legends: Wild Rift, the long-awaited mobile adaptation of the hit PC game League of Legends, finally got a regional beta in seven countries across Asia on Wednesday. The title from Tencent Holdings subsidiary Riot Games has been highly anticipated since it was announced in 2019, 10 years after the launch of the original.

The game is now available to download on Google Play in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. Riot Games said on Weibo that five other countries – Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Myanmar and East Timor – would also be part of the open beta test.

Gamers elsewhere in the world will have to wait a little longer. Riot Games said the release in North America, South America and India has been delayed until 2021 because of challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company did not specify a release date for other regions, including China.

“It has turned out to be an incredibly tough year for all of us. And it’s presented some unique challenges for launching any new game, let alone a global competitive mobile game, with some very unprecedented server and infrastructure needs,” said Michael Chow, executive producer at Riot Games, in a video posted to Twitter.

He added, “It has become a much more complex and multifaceted problem to bring service to your regions in particular.”