[why&next] 'Mangsayongryo' Butterfly Effect... Twitch Quality Degradation → Naver Outage

200,000 Viewers Flock to Naver for High-Quality Viewing of LoL World Championship (League of Legends League)
Twitch Lowers Video Quality Citing 'Bandwidth Fees,' Fans Say "Let's Watch on Naver"

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Last weekend, Naver's major services simultaneously experienced access disruptions. The cause is presumed to be a sudden surge in traffic, and behind this disruption lies the issue of 'network usage fees.'

Major Naver Services Disrupted During 'LoL World Championship'

According to the IT industry on the 7th, Naver users experienced access errors around 2 PM the previous day on shopping, maps, news, webtoons (Series), NOW., blogs, and eSports services.

In the case of Naver Shopping, clicking on some product sales links resulted in an error message stating "The product does not exist." When accessing the Naver Maps application, users encountered connection errors with messages like "Please check your network connection and try again," or destination-related search results failed to appear.

Most of these disruptions were restored by 3:30 PM. However, Naver eSports continued to experience access errors even after other services were restored, finally recovering around 4:25 PM, about five hours after the disruption began.

A Naver representative stated regarding the error, "The more users a service has, the more bottlenecks occur, and it seems that the traffic concentrated on the Naver eSports LoL World Championship affected this." They added, "There was no other event during that time that caused such a significant traffic surge."

Viewers Flocking to Naver Due to Twitch Quality Degradation

This disruption appears to have been caused by approximately 200,000 viewers simultaneously flocking to watch the '2022 League of Legends (LoL) World Championship' (LoL World Championship) broadcasted in eSports.

Naver has been broadcasting the LoL World Championship annually since 2014. Until now, there have been some minor broadcast delays, but there have been no cases of other service disruptions occurring during the LoL World Championship broadcast like this one.

The service disruption during the tournament that Naver has broadcast annually seems to have been influenced by Twitch limiting the maximum video quality to 720p in South Korea.

Twitch announced on its official blog on September 28, shortly after the National Assembly's network usage fee discussions began in earnest, that it would adjust the maximum video quality for Korean viewers to 720p to continue operating its service in South Korea. This quality change applies only to Korean viewers, reducing the quality from the previous 1080p to 720p.

Twitch is the world's largest video streaming service and one of the most popular platforms for viewers wanting to watch the LoL World Championship. However, Twitch implemented the quality restriction on September 29, the opening day of the LoL World Championship, sparking dissatisfaction among many domestic game fans and streamers. The quality degradation measure is interpreted as an effort to rally heavy users, such as those who consume large amounts of traffic through game broadcasts, to oppose network usage fees.

However, Twitch has yet to clearly explain why it decided to implement the quality degradation measure. On its blog, Twitch explained the reason for the quality restriction as "the cost of providing the service is increasing," and "a solution was necessary to continue operating the service in South Korea."

In this regard, the Korea Communications Commission's User Protection Division has begun an on-site inspection based on a review of basic data. The purpose is to verify whether there is any violation of prohibitions against harming user interests. If it is confirmed that user interests were harmed without justifiable reasons, a fact-finding investigation will be launched.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.