The League of Legends community was shook when Riot Games announced that it was dealing with a hacker earlier late last week. Now, Riot has informed gamers that they are refusing to pay a ransom for stolen source code.
Riot was attacked by a hacker on Friday of last week, but assured players that nobody’s data or personal information was in trouble. Instead, it was determined that the hackers were focused on stealing League of Legends’ source code, as well as code for Teamfight Tactics and one of Riot’s anti-cheat systems. The hackers wound up with C++ source files.
Then on January 24, the hackers sent a ransom email to Riot Games.
Today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won’t pay.
While this attack disrupted our build environment and could cause issues in the future, most importantly we remain confident that no player data or player personal information was compromised.
2/7
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 24, 2023
“Today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won’t pay,” Riot wrote on Twitter.
Riot provides update to League of Legends hacker situation
The tweet continued to explain that the attack “disrupted” the company’s build environment, which may cause future issues. But nothing the hacker took was related to player data. Meanwhile, new cheats may start emerging but Riot is working on its anti-cheat and is prepared to address issues as needed.
“The illegally obtained source code also includes a number of experimental features. While we hope some of these game modes and other changes eventually make it out to players, most of this content is in prototype and there’s no guarantee it will ever be released,” Riot stated.
For now, Riot Games has contacted law enforcement regarding the hacker. The breach is now being investigated as Riot works on repairing their security by the end of the week. The hacking situation has taken precedent at Riot, meaning League of Legends updates had to be delayed.
This isn’t the first time a huge game company was hacked. Rockstar Games was hacked in the fall of 2022, leading to a lot of leaks for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto title. That situation was elevated to an FBI investigation, with the hacker eventually arrested.
The Riot Games hacker is still at large.
