Hackers steal League of Legends source code and blackmail Riot Games

Hacking and cyber security are major sore points many in the online world overlook. But Riot Games are the latest entity to fall victim, suffering a major breach by hackers. The company came out with a statement claiming the people who were responsible for the database breach had requested over $10 million in ransom, but they weren’t planning on paying it since no player information was compromised.

Why Riot Games being hacked in 2023 matters?

Data collection is a big money business happening behind the curtains of the online world. But many people don’t seem to be aware of that. This is especially true in the gaming world. Most of the consumers are underaged or uninformed about what is being done with their information. Every click you make on the internet is being tracked and stored somewhere, which is valuable information for whoever owns it. Companies make a lot of money selling this information but what happens when they are the ones buying?

Well, Riot Games just had a similar experience, having its databases breached through a planned social engineering attack. And while they claim no user data has been compromised, we can never know for certain. According to their statement, the hackers have gotten their hands on the source code for Valorant and League of Legends. This also includes the Teamfight Tactics client. And while some of you might be happy to hear this claiming the hackers could fix the League of Legends client, it seems they want none of it.

Hackers try to blackmail Riot Games

$10 million is the price tag the hackers are asking for, but Riot Games has already said they don’t plan on paying for it. The damage has already been done and it has resulted in multiple delays in production. Their 13.02 patch was completely scrapped and replaced with a secondary 13. 1 B patch we already went over.  But what’s more worrisome is the fact that we don’t know what these hackers have and how they plan on monetizing it. 

The company has stated that the hackers have control over their legacy anti-cheat tool called Packman. This is important because it protects both Valorant and League of Legends. With this information at hand, the creation of cheats for both games that will be impossible to detect is more than likely. Not only does it undermine the competitive integrity of the game, but it also throws a big wrench into their future. 

Riot Games latest victim to hackers

Riot Games has made a fortune publishing free to play games. Managing to keep themselves afloat and profitable through a complex system of purchasing in-game cosmetics. But if the information about every transaction ever made in a Riot Games client ends up in the hands of hack, who knows what could happen?  League of Legends has been dealing with the issue of botted accounts and prohibited scripting tools since it went public. And all of that money will go to waste if the people who currently own their source code, make it public on the internet. 

They aren’t the only company in the field to suffer a breach but the scale is important. Rockstar Games had a similar issue with many GTA 6 designs washing up on the internet. Valve had the entire source code for Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life leaked online. But those are much older games with a dedicated fan base. That audience still plays those games without any major gameplay changes.

Future of Riot Games after hack

Valorant just got into a franchised format for competitive gaming ahead of its third birthday. People have been calling League of Legends a dead game for quite some time. But it’s still one of the most played games with the most popular esport in the world. Those hackers might not be fixing the spaghetti code made up of 5 programming languages in the Riot Games client. The community will probably do it for free if it ends up being released. But if the people responsible for this situation decide to use this code to its full extent, it will be a major uphill battle for Riot Games to contain the damage.