Patch days for any game are often filled with error codes, and that was the case today when I tried to log in to League of Legends.
League Patch 14.4 went live today, Feb. 22, and it was supposed to add the Victorious Tryndamere skin for the second ranked split of 2023. Even though I’ve never played a single game of Tryndamere before, I logged in to the Riot client today to download the latest League update and see if the skin was in my inventory.
After seemingly completing the update, I clicked the big blue “Play” button in the client and was immediately greeted with an error message saying “League of Legends failed to launch.” “Something unusual happened while trying to launch League of Legends,” the error message read. “Try closing and restarting. If the problem persists, contact our player support team.”
I tried to close and restart the client several times, even signing in and out too, but nothing seemed to work. I eventually was able to get into the game, though, so here’s how I fixed the “League of Legends failed to launch” error.
How to fix “League of Legends failed to launch” error
First, I need to specify that I play League on a MacBook (I know, I hear it enough from my friends, you don’t need to yell at me too). So when I was having trouble getting into the game earlier today and several co-workers and friends said they weren’t having issues, I immediately started to think this could be a Mac-related error code.
After reaching out to Riot support as the error message suggested, it turns out that was the case in this instance. I submitted a ticket to Riot’s player support team and explained how I’m on Mac and downloaded the latest update but couldn’t launch the game. I quickly got a response back: “We have good news, thanks to reports like yours we are already aware of the problem that Mac users are facing when launching League of Legends and our engineering teams are currently working on a solution. We have just been informed that the issue with Mac should be fixed, so I am going to ask you to please restart your client and verify that you no longer have a problem launching the game.”
Once I saw the reply from Riot, I restarted my client and I didn’t have any issues launching League (though Victorious Tryndamere is still missing for now). If you face the “League of Legends failed to launch” error, try closing and restarting your client. And if that doesn’t work, try contacting Riot support. If you get this error message and you aren’t a Mac player, your report could help Riot fix the issue more quickly.
