[HN Gopher] Riot extorts League of Legends legacy version fan pr...
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Riot extorts League of Legends legacy version fan project?
Author : trashapr2421
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-04-24 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| MisterKent wrote:
| If this were really what Riot wanted, they would stop serving the
| now nine+(?) year old assets from their CDN.
|
| Not sure why this "security" guy is the one responsible for
| reaching out.
|
| Not sure why he's asking about how they distributed their
| "workload".
|
| To me, it sounds like some script kiddy wants to steal their
| project and sell it for profit. Otherwise, they wouldn't need the
| source code, domain name, or details of how the project runs.
|
| Also, why would they configure their mail client to have "Riot
| Zed" as their name? Makes zero sense, smells like a scam to me.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think it's relatively common to have support responses not
| sent under the employee's real name. "Riot Zed" sounds about as
| common as "Alice at Foobarcorp" or "Gamemaster Bob".
|
| There is just too much out there for someone to find when using
| their full name. No need to give angry customers an easy way to
| dox your employees.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| All the riot folks use handles when communicating externally.
| zachruss92 wrote:
| What the devs are doing here seems similar to the private
| RuneScape servers that exist to this day. The only thing I can
| think of is that RuneScape created OSRS (olde school RuneScape)
| off of a backup from 2007. Maybe Riot is planning on doing
| something similar?
|
| While this seems outrageous I can see why Riot is interested in
| protecting their IP especially given how they're looking to
| expand their lore of Runeterra to other mediums (TV Shows, other
| games, etc..)
|
| Regardless there is a right way to confront them on legal
| concerns. A dev threatening on discord is not that.
| livueta wrote:
| RSPS server sources are all from leaks; you can
| decompile/reflect the client all you want but the server bits
| (let alone sources) were never distributed. Jagex has used this
| fact to go after RSPSes.
|
| It's not totally clear from the post, but it sounds like this
| is different in that Riot is just straight-up serving all the
| assets they need? I can see how that'd lead the project
| developers to think they're in the clear.
|
| It seems like a lot of people who get involved in fan projects
| are unfortunately naive about both the technical legality of
| what they're doing and how eager the company will be to stick
| it to them. From my perspective having done RSPS things, it's
| absolutely insane to have not operated from the beginning
| assuming that adversaries wouldn't do everything possible to
| dox you and ruin your life. You need to be able to laugh at
| threats like this if the goal is a long-lived project, though
| that presumes an adversarial relationship with the devs. I
| guess my point is that non-adversarial relationships with
| projects of this sort are really rare and that assuming this
| was fine strikes me as questionable at best. Even if you do
| think you have some sort of fair-use defense, you should expect
| to have fun experiencing legal-system process-as-punishment for
| a couple of years.
| Sebguer wrote:
| Wow, I know nothing about this project, but if the person who
| reached out to this developer is actually employed by Reddit,
| this reads as one of the most unprofessional things I've ever
| seen from a company of Riot's size? It sounds like there's some
| questions regarding the legitimacy in the comments of the
| original thread, but OP provided email headers from a person with
| the same email as the handle in the discord screencaps.
|
| Highlights:
|
| >The courts are always an option, but it's long and messy so we
| thought we'd do some outreach to see if we could work together to
| prevent everyone the trouble
|
| >You've obviously put a lot of work into Chrono shift, but I
| assure you that the Chrono break is coming
|
| >If it were scare tactics Riot wanted you wouldn't be speaking to
| me
| da_chicken wrote:
| > _if the person who reached out to this developer is actually
| employed by Reddit, this reads as one of the most
| unprofessional things I 've ever seen from a company of Riot's
| size_
|
| (I assume s/Reddit/Riot/ ?)
|
| Riot has a history of unprofessional conduct. The gender
| discrimination scandals across the entire company [0] is just
| one that springs to mind.
|
| [0]: https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-
| game...
| Sebguer wrote:
| Very fair, my comment was actually rather blase, since Riot
| has done far worse on far more important things.
|
| I suppose the Chronoshift developers should be happy no one
| farted on them.
| kemonocode wrote:
| Something smells fishy here. Surely sending a C&D letter would
| have been more cost/time efficient for all parties involved? Then
| again, I wouldn't put it past Riot to try to employ these kind of
| shakedown tactics given their... ah, "culture".
| jrockway wrote:
| Very interesting. Why would you send some junior engineer to have
| this chat over Discord? It seems like all he accomplished was
| confessing to violating Discord's ToS and saying "yeah well I'm
| gonna sic the lawyers on you". Why not just sent the lawyers
| directly? It almost sounds like "legal told us not to go after
| you guys, but I personally really want to" at this point. It just
| doesn't add up.
|
| Since this is a Reddit thread, how would you "maliciously comply"
| with this guy? Convince him, someone who probably doesn't dot
| their Is and cross their Ts, that he successfully got your
| domain, then pull it out from under them in a few weeks? I can't
| think of anything, and it obviously doesn't seem like a good
| legal strategy, but if someone else did it I would sure enjoy
| reading about it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| From the whispers we've heard about Riot Games over the years I
| entirely believe this is their corporate SOP for shutting down
| unwanted fan projects.
|
| That being said if I were in their shoes I'd shut down
| immediately, put up some angry screed on the project's website,
| and disappear off the Internet. If someone from Riot's actual
| legal team wants to demand destruction of source code or
| whatever, let them do the extra PI gruntwork.
|
| Of course I'm also the kind of person who's massively shied away
| from fan projects precisely because there are people who not only
| do not appreciate them, but are entirely willing to legally
| prosecute you far beyond just shutting down the project and
| clearing the market. Why? I dunno. There's a weird school of
| copyright morality that wants to equivocate any kind of
| infringement with forcible rape, especially with regards to fan
| projects. It's like some sort of weird dual to toxic fandom.
|
| (It does not help that certain fan scenes, notably Melee, are
| full of actual sex pests. I still consider it a false
| equivocation.)
| jarym wrote:
| 'zed' sounds and acts like a child. Sure he's a 'not-lawyer' but
| c'mon, is he also a 'not-professional'?
| Shadonototro wrote:
| - you distribute edited Riot's file to allow people to connect to
| your servers, it is IP theft, and a big security threat towards
| Riot's consumers
|
| - leaking private discussion online, that's a thing that'll be
| used against you in the court
|
| - you complain about the way they handle the situation, you
| wanted them to work with you on the project instead? .. what a
| terrible excuse
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(page generated 2021-04-24 23:01 UTC)