Riot Games sends cringey edgelord employee to threaten creator of League fan project

[Robinson]

Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueofle.../just_a_heads_up_the_independently_developed/

A few nostalgic League of Legends fans had been building a piece of server software called "Chronoshift" that would allow fans to play a 10 year old version of the game.

After several years of development, the creators made a thread announcing the project on the League of Legends subreddit last year.

Riot Games is very strict about protecting their IP, so even though the software was written entirely from scratch, it still violated the rules stated on Riot's website.

A Riot employee even commented on the announcement thread politely requesting the developers to stop working on the project.

Despite being explicitly denied permission, development on the project continued.

This brings us to a few days ago, when one of the project devs was contacted on Discord by a member of Riot's security team named "zed" (seemingly after the extremely edgy ninja character from the game).

Needless to say, the League of Legends subreddit is now filled with people making fun of this "zed" person and characterizing him as a trenchcoat-wearing neckbeard.

If you needed any more evidence that Riot is a shitty company run by man-children, well there you go.

Oh, and by the way, remember the Riot employee who farts on people? He still works there. In fact, he's the COO.

Christ.

A few choice quotes:

"I'm on the security team. I find people and things."
Calm down, Liam Neeson.

"You've obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the Chrono break is coming."
This is beyond cringeworthy. Chronobreak is the name of an Ultimate ability in LoL.

"We can come to an agreement to end this today or we can both hand this off to council. To be honest I don't care either way"
You mean counsel? This isn't Star Wars, dude.


Don't get me wrong, the devs are definitely the ones at fault here for continuing to work on the project without permission, but the way Riot went about taking them down was comical at best. It must be pure suffering to work at Riot if you aren't an edgy gamer bro like this gentleman.

 

[gigantor21]

"I wish I could say it's been a pleasure."

This motherfucker walked straight out of a crappy fanfic.

 

[Robinson]

"I wish I could say it's been a pleasure."

This motherfucker walked straight out of a crappy fanfic.

 

[Indy in the Fridge]

i wish i could say it has been a pleasure

 

[gigantor21]

How did you find his picture so fast?

 

[Alvis]

This is the worst possible way to handle this. I don't see how it's possible to see this and not cringe at Riot's methods.

And not only is it cringe: it's evil. They're going beyond just "please shut this down" and they are demanding them to turn all they've done over to them, for no reason other than just being evil.

Fuck Riot.

 

[Gegz]

"You've obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the Chrono break is coming."

Lmao i'm done for the day

 

[Robinson]

How did you find his picture so fast?

It was on his LinkedIn.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

No fucking way a real employee hops on discord to role play while threatening legal action. I refuse to believe this.

 

[Arkanim94]

This zed eats fedoras daily probably.

 

[Robinson]

No fucking way a real employee hops on discord to role play while threatening legal action. I refuse to believe this.

Riot has confirmed that it's real.

 

[entrydenied]

Why does it sound like a script written by people who translated jrpgs badly?I can somehow hear the Chaos War people dubbing the lines.

 

[EatChildren]

Gamers forgive me, but I'll have to go all out...just this once.

 

[vixolus]

Even if this is fake or real it's pretty funny. It's only missing a *teleports behind you* somewhere

 

[FormatCompatible]

Oof. What a completely embarrassing display from such a huge company. But coming from Riot I have to say I'm not surprised that they would send this kind of fuck boy to handle a potential legal issue like this.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

Riot has confirmed that it's real.

I said I refuse!

This is seriously some cringe as shit.

 

[Metroidvania]

IF that's really a riot employee, that's possibly one of the dumbest things to have gone 'on record' for, jeez.

But the amount of not-so-subtle phishing going on makes me wonder.

 

[Richter1887]

Damn son

We are getting not just Chrono 3 but 4 as well!

 

[ApeEscaper]

Expected from Riot Games, lmao at this tool

 

[HardRojo]

I had to stop, man I just couldn't keep reading lol. Still not the cringiest thing I've read, but it's up there. Mike Z's chat is probably the cringiest shit I've read so far.

 

[spman2099]

"I'm on the security team. I find people and things."

Jesus Christ, this dude was REALLY feeling himself.

 

[HybridEidolon]

Between the cofounder dogwhistling about critical race theory on Twitter, the gender discrimination lawsuit, their complete failure to rein in their game communities, and this, I'm increasingly concerned about Riot's leadership.

 

[DanteMenethil]

You just know he wears fingerless gloves

 

[strudelkuchen]

This is exactly what I expect from Riot.

 

[Rackham]

I really don’t know much about league but didn’t it basically get started because of the modding scene and fan creations?

 

[Pancracio17]

I cant believe what im reading lmfao, the guy has been waiting to say those lines for a long time.

 

[Rosebud]

"I find people and things"

Wow, easy there Sherlock Holmes

 

[strudelkuchen]

I really don’t know much about league but didn’t it basically get started because of the modding scene and fan creations?

Yes. They made a game out of a mod of a game and then conned the world in naming all of them "MOBA".

 

[Winky’sWalkway]

It’s a little cringe but most developers probably just serve papers and move on. Is the developer in the wrong? I’m not sure. At least Riot poorly attempted to reach out and resolve this in some way.

 

[Rackham]

Yes. They made a game out of a mod of a game and then conned the world in naming these games "MOBA".

Seems really hypocritical of them to shut down fan projects

 

[Loxley]

Y'all are laughing at that Riot employee, but just you wait, while you were wasting your time going to parties and posting on Era, he's been studying the blade.

 

[DarkChronic]

To be honest i thought lord loth was pretty cringy too.

“lets dispense with the frivolities”

this whole chat man, lmao

 

[HylianSeven]

"You've obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the Chrono break is coming."
This is beyond cringeworthy. Chronobreak is the name of an Ultimate ability in LoL.

I thought this was an allegory to the Chrono Trigger series at first, thinking that Chrono Resurrection was called "Chrono Shift" for some reason, and that Chrono Break was a reference to that rumored "Chrono Break" that never became anything.

 

[strudelkuchen]

Seems really hypocritical of them to shut down fan projects

League does not use any art/ip/code from Warcraft 3 or DotA to the best of my knowledge, so it's not really "hypocritical".

 

[Phellps]

That "Chrono break" line is sending me. What a cringe fest.

 

[JoeInky]

This is the worst possible way to handle this. I don't see how it's possible to see this and not cringe at Riot's methods.

And not only is it cringe: it's evil. They're going beyond just "please shut this down" and they are demanding them to turn all they've done over to them, for no reason other than just being evil.

Fuck Riot.

Probably so they can steal more shit from their community

League does not use any art/ip/code from Warcraft 3 or DotA to the best of my knowledge, so it's not really "hypocritical".

They did steal hero ideas from the dota forums when they originally shut it down

 

[Kade]

I really don’t know much about league but didn’t it basically get started because of the modding scene and fan creations?

Yep. They've never really supported modding their own games though and they like to control the end-user experience much tighter than other devs, a trait even reflected in the way their games are designed.

 

[Lube Man]

Flame War Theater, when?!

 

[Quade]

The Chrono break line, hooooooooooly

 

[Watchtower]

Isn't Zed named after a Riot employee username? I know a handful of them are, wasn't sure if he was one of them.

If so, this could be the same guy which would be the cherry on top of this cringe cake.

 

[Goldenroad]

I feel like all that conversation was, was two people constantly tipping their fedora's at each other after each comment.

They both come across very "edge-lordy" to me. So glad I'm not at all associated with that community. Yikes.

 

[collige]

I really don’t know much about league but didn’t it basically get started because of the modding scene and fan creations?

Pretty much, there was also some drama around some character concepts being taken from posts on a forum iirc.

Riot Games is very strict about protecting their IP, so even though the software was written entirely from scratch, it still violated the rules stated on Riot's website.

OK but which rules and how are they enforced? The fact that the devs are apparently doing black box reverse engineering and didn't back down before now makes me think the legality of this might not be so black and white, but I don't know much about the implementation at all.

 

[TheWorthyEdge]

Let's see what my Riot lovin' pals say about this one. This is all sorts of fucked up.

 

[RailWays]

Sounds like a copypasta in the making

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

 

[Future Gazer]

Eh I expected worse.

 

[Linkark07]

Between the cofounder dogwhistling about critical race theory on Twitter, the gender discrimination lawsuit, their complete failure to rein in their game communities, and this, I'm increasingly concerned about Riot's leadership.

Isn't Riot full of toxic employees? Even if the entire leadership changes, the same usual shit will continue since it is ingrained in their culture.

 

[SunshinePuppies]

Doxxing is not allowed on this website. Mods please ban

 

[s_hyperion]

" I assure you that the Chrono break is coming."

Oh, I wish ;-(

 

[Rover_]

*rules of nature starts playing*

ffs i'm dying from cringe and laughter
i wondered if they mastered the blade