Riot say it’s not paying the ransom
League of Legends studio Riot Games has now confirmed that, following a recent cyberattack, hackers took source code for both League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, as well as a legacy anti-cheat platform. But after being sent a ransom demand, Riot says it won’t be paying.
Last week, Riot announced its systems were compromised in a social engineering attack, a method that also resulted in the massive Grand Theft Auto leak last year. No player or personal data was obtained, but today Riot confirms that source code for the aforementioned programs was taken. The attackers submitted a ransom demand, but Riot Games says it will not be paying.
“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,” said Riot in a statement. “Truthfully, any exposure of source code can increase the likelihood of new cheats emerging. Since the attack, we’ve been working to assess its impact on anticheat and to be prepared to deploy fixes as quickly as possible if needed.”
Prototypes and sources
While the source code contained a number of experimental features, Riot says most of it is in prototype and may or may not be released in the future. The company is working with external consultants to audit the attack, and plans to release a report on it in the future. Also, Riot confirms it is working with law enforcement as they investigate the group behind the attack.
“We’ve made a lot of progress since last week and we believe we’ll have things repaired later in the week, which will allow us to remain on our regular patch cadence going forward,” reads Riot’s statement. “The League and TFT teams will update you soon on what this means for each game.”
