Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) winners, GAM Esports, will not be able to attend the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational due to "travel restrictions related to COVID-19", Riot Games confirmed Monday.

"We explored numerous solutions that would allow the VCS team to compete in Iceland, but we were unable to find a way to make this happen," the developer wrote.

This is the second international event that Vietnam teams — and GAM Esports in particular — will be missing due to COVID-19 restrictions. VCS was slated to have two slots at the 2020 World Championship, with GAM starting in the Play-In stage and Team Flash qualifying directly for groups. Instead of traveling to Shanghai, both teams were home-bound due to travel restrictions and couldn't represent their country.

GAM and VCS were supposed to compete in MSI 2021 Group A against LPL's Royal Never Give Up, LCL's Unicorns of Love, and LCO's Pentanet.GG. Despite GAM not attending, Group A will continue as planned, with top two teams qualifying for the Rumble Stage. 

"While this was an incredibly tough decision, we are committed to bringing the best possible League of Legends experience to our global community without compromising the health and safety of our players and staff," Riot Games added.

MSI 2021 begins May 6.