screengrab via Riot Games

Rampant cheating in Riot Games’ titles becomes a concern following major cyber attack

2023 might see the player’s positive experience in jeopardy.

New cheats in Riot Games’ titles may emerge after hackers exfiltrated the games’ source code during the cyber attack that hit the company earlier this week. The game company shared an update a few days after its first statement on the incident, ensuring players it is working on assessing the impact the attack might have on the anticheats of Riot’s games. 

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According to Riot, the attackers sent a ransom mail demanding the company to pay an unknown amount of money. The company publicly refused to comply with the request, which might lead to the stolen source code appearing online and causing major disruption to Riot and its games. 

Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, Riot’s head of League Studio, shared on Reddit that there are “meaningful risks” of additional cheating appearing across all affected titles. Similarly, Riot’s statement warned its players that the possible exposure of source code can increase the likelihood of new cheats emerging. 

But not everything is as doomed as it seems. Meddler assures players Riot will try to accelerate its work on updating the anti-cheat with a new system. Meddler previously teased the update during a follow-up message on Riot’s deliveries for the future of League. This update might prevent the new cheats from spreading and destabilizing the gameplay that Riot implemented in its games throughout the years. 

While Riot has been working on various titles in the past decade, League of Legends and VALORANT are undoubtedly its two major titles, and they seem to have been heavily affected by the “social engineering attack”. Riot confirmed to Dot Esports that VALORANT‘s anti-cheat system was not impacted by the cyber attack, dissipating all possible doubts about the future of the FPS’ gameplay integrity.

In the next few months, players might see an increase in cheaters within their games in League, and although Riot is already working on finding a solution to these issues, this might have disastrous effects on the players’ experience. 


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Author
Cecilia Ciocchetti
Freelance writer mainly focusing on the League of Legends and VALORANT esports scenes. Sometimes at events interviewing professionals of the scene, from players to the talented people working behind the curtains. You can reach out to me via Twitter.