Late last week Riot Games, were awarded $10m (£8.2m) following the settlement of a lawsuit against Leaguesharp, a service created to allow its customers to cheat their way through the ranks in League of Legends.
The video game developer and publisher based in Los Angeles, California, is responsible for the world’s largest esports title League of Legends. The lawsuit against Leaguesharp, a company that offers scripts amongst other cheating software has rumbled on since August 2016 but has finally now been settled. The publisher has been awarded $10million (£8.2m) and full control of the Leaguesharp websites.
Simply put, Leaguesharp wasn’t even subtle in what it was offering. Their blog boasted that the script was an “all purpose last hitting, lane freezing and lane clearing solution for League of Legends”. It also told of “Space bar to win, which will carry out lightning fast, perfect combos in a fraction of a second – much faster than normally humanly possible”. The service was a premium service, offering subscriptions for as little as $15 (£12) a month and as much as $50 (£40) a month.
The suit also told of defendants having: “engaged in repeat attacks on Riot’s game servers, counselled their customers about how to cheat in LoL without being caught, and advised customers to fraudulently dispute their in-game LoL transactions”. Furthermore, the game developer revealed “Riot initially attempted to solve this dispute without litigation, including by informally reaching out to Defendants to ask them to cease their activities” to which Leaguesharp did not respond.
In addition to all of the above, Leaguesharp attacked a Riot employee and attempted to hide behind a Peruvian shell company they set up to avoid Riot. The suit reads “Defendants, or those working in concert with them disseminated personal and non-public information about a Riot employee, threatened that employee and posted offensive comments on the employee’s social media. Additionally, Defendants have been quickly and carefully destroying or concealing evidence such as their most incriminating online posts and purporting to hide behind a Peruvian shell corporation created solely for the purpose of evading liability”.
Following the final settlement, Riot Games now has full control of the Leaguesharp sites and will presumably mine them for data on who has been utilising the service before ensuring the site is shut down for good.
Esports Insider says: Websites like Leaguesharp have no place in the esports (nor gaming) world and act solely to damage the ecosystem so carefully built by publishers such as Riot. This is a solid victory for Riot as they look to ensure that cheating is kept as a minimum across League of Legends.
