Riot Shuts Down LoL Fan Server After Getting All Wiseguy With Its Developers

from the nice-project-you-have-there... dept

Way back in 2016, we discussed how Blizzard was very busy shutting down fan-made and hosted World of Warcraft servers, pretending like intellectual property forced it to do so. At the time, these fan servers were hosting WoW's vanilla experience, mimicking what the game looked like upon first release, rather than then current iteration of the ever-evolving MMORPG. While Blizzard has since come out with a vanilla experience product of its own, at the time, these fan servers were filling a market desire for a product that didn't exist. Rather than figuring out a way to work with these fans, Blizzard just shut them down.

And now it's all happening again with Riot, makers of League of Legends, an online game that similarly is ever-evolving. Fans of the game once more created a fan server that hosted the older, vanilla version of the game for those who wanted to play it that way. What makes this situation different, however, is that Riot only sent its C&D notice to the developers after the developers posted online an exchange they had with a Riot representative which took on a very 1920's wise guy tone.

Speaking with PC Gamer, Riot said that it has sent a cease-and-desist request to the developers of Chronoshift after one of them posted an exchange with a Riot employee to Reddit earlier this week. The post showed a back and forth over Discord, during which a member of Riot’s security department named Zed wrote to a Chronoshift developer that Riot’s legal team “isn’t super thrilled about your project unfortunately and is looking for a way to come to a mutually acceptable end to it.”

A few lines later, Zed took the conversation in a decidedly bizarre direction, claiming that their team had archives of chat channels the Chronoshift team tried to delete. Zed followed that by saying, “you’ve obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I assure you that the chrono break is coming.” When the Chronoshift developer asked Zed to dispense with the “scare tactics,” Zed demanded that the developers hand over Chronoshift’s website and source code to Riot, as well as “all identifiable information” they shared with a specific developer. Zed then made the stakes of the situation clear: “Give me what I’m looking for and we won’t sue,” they said. “Refuse and we will.”

Riot told PC Gamer that, while it didn't love the tone of its rep's interactions with the Chronoshift development team, still the request for code and information about the project was a "standard" request. That sort of thing happens so that the rightsholder can figure out exactly to what extent the project was infringing. But it's notable in this case again that Riot doesn't currently have a competing project of its own for this sort of vanilla LoL experience. Despite that, and despite the fact that the Chronoshift team never took a single dime in any way for this project, through donations or otherwise, Riot still shut the whole thing down and pretended intellectual property forced its hand.

In Riot’s letter to the developers, which leaked despite the developers’ apparent wishes, the company also noted that Zed’s grab at the game’s source code was “a standard demand made to all developers engaged in unauthorized activity in order to assist Riot’s security team to understand the precise nature of the project, the manner by which it infringes Riot’s intellectual property, and other rights, and the extent to which the code has been shared or disseminated online.” In other words, it does not appear that the company is planning to use the work of fan developers to form the backbone of its own legacy servers, despite fan speculation to the contrary.

In the letter, Riot further explained that it is compelled to defend its “valuable” intellectual property from conduct that “enables and encourages acts of copyright infringement,” which in turn “harm Riot, its business, and ultimately, its employees.” This is similar to what Blizzard said when it infamously shut down popular fan-run WoW server Nostalrius back in 2016. However, Blizzard has seemingly eased off fan-run servers like Elysium in the wake of WoW Classic’s release.

Similar and equally chock full of bullshit. There are plenty of ways Riot could have worked with these dedicated fans on their project to allow it both to come to fruition while also protecting its own rights. But Riot would have to want to have that kind of outlook and interaction.

Instead, it sure seems like Riot instead wants to apologize for its own rep's "Nice project you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it" tact. Certainly the rest of the League of Legends fandom should be sitting up and taking notice.

Filed Under: chroneshift, fan servers, league of legends, takedowns, threats
Companies: riot games

Thanks Blizzard: Riot Games Forced To Let Everyone Know They're Allowed To Use Hong Kong's LoL Team's Name

from the riot-riot-riot dept

The fallout from Blizzard's heavy-handed move on a professional Hearthstone player for voicing support for the ongoing Hong Kong protests on a livestream, which included ripping away prize money and issuing a 1 year ban on competing, continues to blaze. But while most of the backlash has been directed solely at Blizzard, the company's actions are having a ripple effect across the eSports landscape.

Depressingly, plenty of folks in the eSports industry are clearly frightened that they might accidentally cross some undefined line with gaming companies and find themselves on the losing end of an international public relations argument. One lovely example of this is Riot Games' League of Legends competitions and streams. There appear to be plenty of folks out there that are self-censoring mentions of Hong Kong to ridiculous levels, including attempts to avoid saying the name of a LoL team, the Hong Kong Attitude.

With all the protests going on in Hong Kong, League of Legends casters appear to be avoiding saying the team name “Hong Kong Attitude” and seem to even be catching themselves when they do. Riot Games, however, says that it has not banned casters from saying “Hong Kong.”

Chinese conglomerate Tencent owns Riot and has a stake in Blizzard.

It may be that last detail that has so many streamers spooked. Still, this all reached enough of a fever pitch that Riot Games decided to put out several statements clarifying that its streamers can in fact refer to a League of Legends team and, tangentially, use the name of one of the more populous cities on the planet. The fact that it had to do this at all is fairly crazy, but the detail here really drives that point home.

Again, this is crazy. A sentence that consists of "We aren't telling anyone to avoid saying 'Hong Kong'" shows just how effective Beijing's campaign of weaponized offense-taking has become. The entire point of the Chinese government's actions is to keep the Hong Kong protests out of the mouths of those that might be listened to. For this to morph into some of those people censoring themselves into not even mentioning the city's name for a competition that has an entrant from that city must feel like all of Xi Jinping's birthdays and Christmases came at once.

It is now long, long past time for these gaming companies, regardless of minority ownership stakes, to come out in support for the free expression of their employees and affiliates.

Filed Under: chilling effects, china, esports, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, hong kong attitude, league of legends
Companies: blizzard, riot games, tencent

Moonton Responds To Copyright Infringement Suit From Riot Games By Threatening The Press With Lawsuits

from the great-strategy,-yo dept

While we often talk about oversteps regarding copyright protectionism and lawsuits in these here pages, it's not as though there aren't understandable disputes that exist. Likewise, while we often detail bad actions by aggressors on copyright issues, it's not as though those on the defending side of that coin are always virtuous in the way they handle the dispute. The issue of game and mobile application cloning serves as a good ecosystem to show plenty of examples of both, with the latest dust-up between Riot Games and Shanghai Moonton Technology offering a specific look at how a party on the defense from a copyright claim can get everything wrong.

First, some background. Riot Games recently filed a lawsuit against Moonton for copyright infringement over three Moonton games: Mobile Legends 5V5 MOBA, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Magic Rush: Heroes. A cursory look at the evidence Riot Games offered up in the filing sure makes it look like Moonton was simply cloning League of Legends, from title screen to in-game design.

And there's a lot more images you can compare in the link. The point is that nobody is going to look at this lawsuit and think Riot Games is crazy for filing it. There is enough cloning going on here to make even the most sympathetic pause. By now you're probably wondering why this post is appearing on Techdirt at all, as we don't make a habit of posting about seemingly legitimate intellectual property lawsuits.

Well, you're reading this because we certainly do write posts about companies that attempt to lash out at the press and threaten them with lawsuits for covering them critically. And that's exactly what Moonton decided to do in the face of the lawsuit.

In case you can't see the embed, that reads:

Official Statement: Recently some media have published negative and unreal reports against Mobile Legends. Here is the statement of Moonton.

Mobile Legends is a MOBA game that is developed by Moonton independently, and its copyright has already been registered and protected in multiple countries all over the world. Moonton has independent intellectual property rights.

Mobile Legends and all the users will not be affected by these unreal reports and we will keep providing the best gameplay experience to players all over the world.

Meanwhile, for some media and competitors who have spread the unreal information and rumors against us, we reserve the right to protect ourselves and pursue legal actions.

Vague threats against the press for reporting on the lawsuit is simply not a good look. It also serves to put this into Streisand Effect territory, with much more coverage on the lawsuit due to Moonton's response than would otherwise have existed. References to "unreal information" and "rumors" seem particularly silly, given that there is a very real and concrete lawsuit currently filed against the company, one which the press is certainly going to report on, whether Moonton likes it or not.

So, feel free to debate the validity of Riot's lawsuit all you want, but this is a terrible response from Moonton.

Filed Under: copyright, free speech, infringement, league of legends, mobile legends, threats
Companies: moonton, riot games

Riot Games Joins Blizzard In Misusing Copyright To Go After Video Game Cheaters

from the you're-not-helping dept

Readers here likely have begun to associate the attempted twisting of copyright law to go after video game cheaters with Blizzard. After all, between its StarCraft and Overwatch properties, the gamemaker has made something of a name for itself by attempting to assert a combination of "you only bought a license" and "breaking the EULA creates a copyright violation" theories into a "we can sue you for hacking our games" legal sandwich. It's a terribly frustrating thing to watch Blizzard do, as it tries to pretzel copyright law in a way never intended, and typically to achieve little if any legal success by doing so.

Well, everyone knew that Blizzard wouldn't be pulling this act solo forever, and now we know who the next game company to take up this loser of a strategy will be: Riot Games. Yes, the maker of the popular League of Legends is asserting copyright violations to go after those who create and use cheats and hacks. The complaint specifically targets a cheat called "LeagueSharp," which apparently allows players to automate aspects of gameplay, including targeting other players and seeing game objects that should be hidden.

"Among other things, L# enables its users to abuse LoL by allowing them to, for example, see hidden information; 'automate' gameplay to perform in the game with enhanced or inhuman accuracy; and accumulate levels, experience, and items at a rate that is not possible for a normal human player."

While this sounds very similar to many of the cheats and hacks that Blizzard has complained about, part of the impetus for this legal action is the popularity surrounding League of Legends eSport tournaments. eSports is becoming quite a thing these days, with viewership numbers that are comparable to viewership of traditional athletic competitions. As we've said in the past, cheating in online multiplayer games is at best annoying and at worst truly disruptive to the gaming experience. The stakes only rise when we begin talking about the eSports world, with competitive professionals competing. One can see how analagous to steroids in sports hacks might be in the eSports world. Still, the theories Riot Games trots out to back its copyright claims are nearly identical to Blizzard's, and those claims don't become stronger just because eSports is a thing.

It won't help the makers of the hacks that they appear to have acted in ways that will put them in a negative light.

"Defendants or those working in concert with them disseminated personal and non-public information about a Riot employee, threatened that employee, and posted offensive comments on the employee’s social media. Additionally, knowing that this lawsuit was imminent, Defendants have been quickly and carefully destroying or concealing evidence such as their most incriminating online posts and purporting to hide behind a Peruvian shell corporation created solely for the purpose of evading liability."

Which may indeed make them assholes, but it does not make them guilty of copyright infringement. The claims by Riot Games still come down to the claim that a violation of a Terms of Use agreement renders a license for the game invalid, meaning copyright infringement, along with a claim that creating a hack for a video game violates the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. For that last claim to work, Riot Games would need to demonstrate that these specific cheats are lessening the value of the game in general.

Given the insane success that is League of Legends, that might be a tough claim to make. Regardless, this isn't how copyright was meant to be used and stretching it in this way serves nobody at all.

Filed Under: cheats, copyright, video games
Companies: blizzard, riot games

Adding Value While Correcting Player Behavior Through Positive Reinforcement

from the who's-a-good-player?-you-are! dept

Hop onto most any online multiplayer forum or other chat site, and you will find horror story after horror story of foul mouthed, homophobic, misogynistic, racist rage quitters. Bad behavior has become almost synonymous with gaming online. Thankfully, many game developers are looking at ways to combat such behavior. While many companies have systems that punish bad behavior, some are looking in the opposite direction, of rewarding positive behavior.

League of Legends developer, Riot Games, has taken this latter approach. In a new system for fostering positive behavior, such as team work and friendliness, Riot has hired a group of experts to implement an honor system in its game.

Here's the background: Six months ago, Riot established Team Player Behavior — affectionately called Team PB&J — a group of experts in psychology, neuroscience, and statistics (already, I am impressed). At the helm is Jeffrey Lin, better known as Dr. Lyte, Riot's lead designer of social systems. As quoted in a recent article at Polygon:

We want to show other companies and other games that it is possible to tackle player behavior, and with certain systems and game design tools, we can shape players to be more positive.

Which brings us to the Honor system. Honor is a way for players to reward each other for good behavior. This is divvied up into four categories: Friendly, Helpful, Teamwork, and Honorable Opponent. At the end of a match, players can hand out points to those they deem worthy. These points are reflected on players' profiles, but do not result in any in-game bonuses or rewards (though this may change in the future). All Honor does is show that you played nicely.

So how is this honor system working out for League of Legend players? After all, this is what it is all about. Improving the lives of gamers. Well, The Mary Sue provides a few LoL players who were willing to share their stories. For instance, there is this player's experience.

When Honor went live, there was an immediate difference in tone. I had allchat [cross-team chat] disabled in the game because I was tired of hearing incredibly sexist, racist, and homophobic comments being tossed both ways, and if I was playing with randoms, I would often mute them as well. After Honor went up, EVERYONE became nicer – I went from seeing problematic behaviour in almost every game to seeing it something like twice over the span of 20 games (and even then, it got shut down pretty quickly). I've turned allchat back on, and I love the dynamic both in game and after game. People compliment each other's play-style, and on top of giving people on the other team credit for being honorable opponents, you can also give your own team points for being friendly, helpful, and being team-oriented. It's nice to be able to give the good ones credit for what they do, and it's also nice to be able to see such a drastic shift in mentality, even if it is sort of constructed.

While this change in some players' experiences is great, not every negative player will change. There are some people who are fully entrenched in being jerks online. There is no curing such people. Of course, this was expected. For one of the experts, Dr. Lyte, this is not about changing negative players to positive players but about helping neutral players shift toward the positive end of the spectrum.

"The average player in the game is not toxic or positive, they're neutral," Lin says. Because the Honor system allows players to praise other players for their actions "we're able to nudge them a little toward the positive."

I am glad to see that more developers are looking at this as a way of improving player experiences in game. Other developers, such as Blizzard, are more focused on punishing and banning unsavory behavior. What that seems to do mostly is cause people to complain loudly when they are banned. Often these players will make claims that they were banned unfairly or for no reason. Whether true or not, these accusations can then make others a little more wary of taking up the game in the future.

Now, the idea of rewarding positive behavior is far from a new concept. We not so long ago highlighted an experimental program from Valve that attempted something similar. We have highlighted numerous other stories of creators who took the time to encourage positive behavior in their potential customers (you know, by convincing them to buy).

More importantly, this kind of reward system could have a far more important impact on LoL. It could be a great way to keep gamers in the game. It is this large number of players on at all hours that adds value to the game for the individual players. Because of its multiplayer nature, people would not want to play if few people were on and those that were are jerks. So by ensuring that more positive players stay on for longer, the experience will be greatly improved. This positive atmosphere and high value could also have the added benefit of convincing more players to buy in.

Filed Under: good behavior, positive reinforcement
Companies: riot games

Game Company Beats Domain Squatter Today; Should Prepare For More Tomorrow

from the squatter's-paradise dept

When ICANN was in the process of reviewing the application for the new .xxx top-level domain, we were always wary about the idea. We reported that this was nothing but an extortion racket on businesses to force them to buy an expensive and unnecessary TLD for their trademark, for little else but to avoid being associated with porn. That prediction was dead on, as we saw universities rushed to buy up the .xxx versions of their .edu domains.

Then ICANN approved a new plan to allow even more unneeded and unwanted TLDs. Once the bidding process was in motion, we highlighted the sheer number of TLDs that were proposed. While many of these were directly related to certain companies, many were generic TLDs that any website owner might conceivably use. However, just as there are big problems with the .xxx TLD, we will see similar situations here. Companies will be forced to buy up domains in the fear that someone will use their trademarks for potentially nefarious purposes.

All this concern is based not on speculation but on reality, as one game developer Riot Games, the maker of the popular League of Legends game, has learned. Riot Games had recently won a dispute over a a domain squatter that was banking on people mistyping the League of Legends domain. This one was a fairly simple use of one of the current TLDs on the market: .co. The owner of the .co domain had set up the domain to show porn for anyone who mistakenly typed the wrong TLD. This activity is pretty much as old as the internet itself.

While Riot Games was able to win this one, it seems that we're going to be hearing a lot more stories of these kinds of fights once ICANN officially approves the new TLDs and they begin rolling out. The idea that companies are now going to have to keep checking and buying up their domains on all of these variations seems particularly ridiculous. Not only will it be time consuming and a waste of money, but it's unclear that there will be any value at all to these new domains.

Filed Under: domain squatting, top level domains, trademark
Companies: riot games