Caedrel and LoL community react to new MSI HUD

Caedrel at League of Legends Worlds 2024

Riot Games has unveiled a new HUD which will appear on screen during League of Legends’ Mid-Season Invitational (MSI).

The publishers heavily experimented with a new HUD for the First Stand international tournament, and viewers were not happy.

Riot now says it has taken on fan and commentator feedback from that event to create the new MSI display.

Riot revealed the new display alongside all the information you could need to know about MSI 2025.

Champions have been removed from the left and right-hand sides of the screen, with most information now at the bottom.

The gold difference between laners has also been changed to white text with blue or red arrows for who’s winning the match-up.

Riot says a lot of these changes are to give cleaner player POVs and improve clarity across all devices.

Riot’s Senior Manager of Broadcast Production, Samuel ‘Pizza Mama’ Chaimson, expanded on why Riot is updating the HUD:

“The spectator UI is almost old enough to order a beer and wasn’t designed for LoL in 2025.

“There are more objectives, fans watch on new platforms, etc. We’re building for the future to make things more accessible and to make the game easier to follow.”

He later mentioned on Reddit that Riot’s internal testing found watching the game with extra horizontal space feels better.

Pizza Mama also reiterated that this HUD is still being tweaked. In fact, he says Riot were still experimenting right before publishing the new look:

“In full transparency, some of the gremlins like item cost order aren’t quite right in these screenshots because we’ve been listening to casters, players, and costreamers and iterating down to the wire.”

The League of Legends community reacts to the new MSI 2025 HUD

While most agree it’s an improvement on First Stand, the new MSI HUD has still received a mixed reaction.

Notably vocal was Los Ratones founder and wildly popular LoL co-streamer Marc ‘Caedrel Lamont.

The British streamer labelled the new HUD as “ugly and was critical of the decision to change it:

“Please just keep the normal HUD. Even just copying LCK HUD would be perfect.

“Feels like a change for the sake of change, extremely forced for no reason, and just looks like a TikTok live stream.”

His fellow co-streamer Christian ‘IWDominate’ Rivera agreed:

“I mean it just simply looks worse than the normal overlay, really should just take the small L and use the overlay that everyone is used to and enjoys already.”

Meanwhile, Los Ratones’ analyst Molecule was more optimistic, saying it’s ‘better than First Stand’ and admitted that change is hard to adapt to and he does ultimately prefer the original display.

Yet, Riot Pizza Mama stressed on Reddit that the HUD does need updating:

“One thing to keep in mind is that the familiar spectator UI debuted when the EU’s greatest midlaner, Jojopyun, was 7-ish years old.

“It wasn’t designed for the game as it exists now. I’m not a ‘change for change’s sake’ person, but it’s important to remember that the current tool was not originally designed for this job.”