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While video games are hardly critical infrastructure, for millions of gamers around the world, they are an essential part of their downtime entertainment — and for some pro e-sports players, a vital career. Which is why the news that Riot Games’ development environment has been hacked will be a shock to many of its players and fans.
Riot Games, developer of the smash hit title League of Legends, made the announcement via Twitter last Friday, US time. The company believes that no customer data has been compromised, but that the hack will have an effect on upcoming patches and updates.
“Earlier this week, systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack. We don’t have all the answers right now, but we wanted to communicate early and let you know there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained,” Riot Games said in its Twitter thread.
“Unfortunately, this has temporarily affected our ability to release content. While our teams are working hard on a fix, we expect this to impact our upcoming patch cadence across multiple games.”
At the same time, the company’s League of Legends account added a little bit more detail.
“Heads up, players,” the tweet starts. “This may impact our delivery date for Patch 13.2. The League team is working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still.”
The team behind Teamfight Tactics, another popular Riot title, also expressed the risk of delays to game patches.
The team said, “13.2 was focused on further balance updates for Monsters Attack!
“This issue may impact our ability to release the full scope of balance changes planned, but we’re working to implement the most meaningful of those possible through a hotfix at our scheduled patch time.”
Riot Games recently took over the Australian studio of another game developer, the Cyprus-based, Russia-founded company Wargaming. League of Legends has over 150 million registered players, while Valorant, another popular Riot title, boasts 17 million players.
We have contacted Riot Games for further comment.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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