Riot Closes League Of Legends Fan Game After Creators Say Riot Tried To “Blackmail” Them

A group of for almost five years League of Legends Fans worked on it Chronoshift, a “legacy server” that allows gamers to revert to a ten year old version of the ever-evolving MOBA, similar to the previous unofficial servers (and Continued in the wake of) WoW Classic. However, it now appears that way Chronoshift suddenly reached the end of the line courtesy of Riot.

Speak with PC player, Riot said it sent a cease and desist request to the developers of Chronoshift after one of them booked an exchange with a Riot employee on Reddit earlier this week. The post showed a back and forth over discordMeanwhile, a member of Riot’s security department named Zed wrote to a Chronoshift Developers said the Riot legal team “is sadly not particularly enthusiastic about your project and is looking for a way to find a mutually acceptable ending.”

A few lines later, Zed took the conversation in a decidedly bizarre direction, claiming that her team had archives of chat channels Chronoshift Team tried to delete. Zed then said, “You obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shiftbut I assure you that the Chrono Interruption comes. “If the Chronoshift The developer asked Zed to refrain from using the “fear tactic”. Zed asked the developers to hand them over ChronoshiftRiot website and source code and “any identifiable information” that you have given a particular developer. Zed then made the deployment of the situation clear: “Give me what I’m looking for and we won’t sue,” they said. “Refuse and we will.”

On Reddit, ChronoshiftThe developers said Riot tried to “blackmail” them even though the team tried to keep the project free. “In all this time we have never asked for so much donation and paid all expenses out of our pockets”, a Chronoshift Developer wrote and added Chronoshift does not interact with the live version of LoL in “any way, shape, or form” and is not designed to compete with live play.

In his statement too PC playerRiot said it is “disappointed with the tenor of the conversation” that took place, but that it nonetheless “formally requested” ChronoshiftThe developers of “stop developing the project”. In Riot’s letter to the developers that leaked despite the obvious wishes of the developersThe company also noted that Zed’s access to the game’s source code was “a standard requirement for all developers involved in unauthorized activities to help Riot’s security team understand the exact nature and manner of the project Understand how it violates Riot intellectuals property and other rights, and the extent to which the code has been shared or distributed online. In other words, it doesn’t seem like the company plans to use the work of fan developers to form the backbone of its own legacy servers Fan speculation on the contrary.

In the letter, Riot went on to explain that it was forced to protect its “valuable” intellectual property from behavior that “facilitates and encourages copyright infringement” that “harms Riot, its business and ultimately its employees.” This is much like Blizzard said when it infamously shut down the popular fan run Impressive Server Nostalrius in 2016. However, Blizzard has apparently weakened Fan-run servers like Elysium in the course of WoW ClassicPublication. Kotaku turned to Riot with questions about why the company couldn’t make fan projects more tolerant or, for example, develop a device like Blizzard’s Stars ship Arcade (which led to a multiplayer game with its own Kickstarteramong others) but the company did not respond in time for publication. Kotaku held out his hand too ChronoshiftDevelopers who did not respond by posting.

Rebellion’s letter finally called for a halt ChronoshiftThe development, the complete shutdown of the game’s server and the removal of all marketing and advertising for the project from sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. It also echoed Zed’s request ChronoshiftSource code.

ChronoshiftRiot’s developers met Riot’s legal requirements, but the entire interaction clearly left a bitter taste in your mouth.

“This project has always been about preserving the early game seasons that you can no longer experience, a time capsule for something that is long gone and in which people are still very interested to this day,” the developers continued Chronoshiftis now empty website. “Instead of opening up a conversation about the future and interest in such projects, they tried to use our work for free and take legal action against us.”

“We are incredibly disappointed with the way Riot handled this situation,” they said.