Chronobreak | What Is It?

The Chronobreak lets you turn back time to a more favorable position. Not only when playing Ekko in League of Legends, but also when watching professional League of Legends pro play on stage.

What are we talking about? None other than the Chronobreak tool Riot introduced to fans all the way back in 2017. The first time the tool was used was during a game between Cloud9 and FlyQuest. But since then, we’ve witnessed it on multiple occasion. But, what even is Chronobreak and why is it so useful?

What is the Chronobreak Tool in League of Legends?

As already mentioned, the Chronobreak tool, also called the Determinate Disaster Recovery Tool – but that’s way too long so we will keep calling it Chronobreak tool throughout the article – is a system which lets Riot Games turn back time on live game situations.

So, if there is ever a bug that disrupts the game and it cannot be easily fixed, the esports officials will pull up with the Chronobreak tool to turn back time to a situation before the bug happened.

How Does the Chronobreak Tool Work?

How can Riot just turn back time? Well, that’s actually quite simple. In a blog post from 2017, Rick Hoskinson, an engineer on the Deterministic Disaster Recovery team, explained that they configured the esports game servers to record each game in such a way that they have a “complete record of the inputs, match settings and configurations used to play the game.” These recordings are called Server Network Recordings (SNRs).

These recordings can then be used to play back the game servers to a specific point and time within the game before the game breaking bug.

We “commit” to the Chronobreak by killing the bugged-out server instance using a special command that also disconnects all of the real players and broadcast spectators. Players may then reconnect to the new server process through the League client, just like you would if you were dropped from a normal game.

Why Was the Chronobreak Tool Created?

The Chronobreak tool does not originate from the esports side of Riot. The tool which the Chronobreak is based off of was actually called the Delta Checker. It was created, so Riot could perform quick tests derived from a set of recordable inputs.

Then, when the esports team wanted to figure out a way to easily remake matches when game breaking bugs took place on-stage, they turned to the Delta Checker to build the Chronobreak tool we know of today.

Since it’s introduction in 2017, the Chronobreak tool has been updated and improved and we’ve seen multiple instances of it on stage in the LCS, LEC and even at the World Championship.