Riot Games Refuses To Give In To Blackmailers After League of Legends Source Code Hack

Riot Games, the video game developer, publisher and esports tournament company owned by Tencent Holdings ADR (OTC: TCEHY), announced the source code for its game League of Legends had been stolen.

Last week, Riot revealed it had been a victim of a cyber attack, but assured that no important data was compromised, including player information.

See Also: Riot Games Hit By Massive Cyber Attack, Affecting Updates For Multiple Titles

Today, the company went on Twitter to inform the source code for both League of Legends and Team Fight Tactics was exfiltrated by the hackers.

“As promised, we wanted to update you on the status of last week’s cyber attack. Over the weekend, our analysis confirmed source code for League, TFT, and a legacy anticheat platform were exfiltrated by the attackers,” Riot tweeted.

As promised, we wanted to update you on the status of last week’s cyber attack. Over the weekend, our analysis confirmed source code for League, TFT, and a legacy anticheat platform were exfiltrated by the attackers.

1/7 https://t.co/IogE05HaD1

— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 24, 2023

League of Legends Data Breach: No Money For The Hackers 

The publisher behind “Valorant” also disclosed it had received a ransom email and wouldn’t negotiate with the attackers: “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.”

In addition, Riot said since the attack its staff had been working to assess the impact on anticheat and to be prepared to deploy fixes as quickly as possible, if needed.

See Also: Why New 'League of Legends' Trailer Is So Bad Riot Games Had To Apologize [VIDEO]

In the Twitter thread, the company confirmed it had notified law enforcement and was “in active cooperation with them as they investigate the attack and the group behind it.”

The video game publisher said it would release a full report in the future detailing the attacker’s techniques.

Why It Matters: This news arrived just as Riot Games laid off 46 employees as part of a larger trend of industry-wide layoffs.

According to IGN, the layoffs mainly affected positions in talent acquisition, recruiting and publishing departments, as well as a few roles in esports and support. The company currently employs around 4,500 people worldwide.

Read Next: Riot Updates Scheduling Strategy For LoL, Valorant; Location Of Next LoL Worlds Leaked

Photo: Fluke Samed on Shutterstock and Riot Games on Wikipedia