Riot Games Wins Lawsuit Against Cheating Website, Gets $10M

League of Legends creator studio Riot Games has had the website LeagueSharp in its sights for providing hacking tools to cheaters in order to gain an advantage over other players. The fight ended up in court, where the gaming company was recently awarded a victory. Now, not only is the website being forced to pay $10 million, it’s also losing its business.

LeagueSharp has been a thorn in Riot Games’ side for a long time, with legitimate players complaining about cheaters always getting the better of them due to completely dishonest means. As a result, the game company filed a lawsuit, where U.S. District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew recently ruled in favor of Riot Games, Dot Esports reports.

The lawsuit was actually concluded a few weeks ago, with LeagueSharp shutting down operations as far back as January. It’s only now that the details of the ruling have been released to the public, providing the media with the specifics with regards to the terms of the lawsuit’s conclusion.

For starters, there’s the huge payout that Riot Games will be receiving, which should work well to deter future attempts at restarting the business. Then there’s the matter of LeagueSharp’s software getting scrapped and turned over to the creator of LOL. Finally, all of the cheat service provider’s websites are now under the control of Riot Games, which should serve to reduce the number of cheaters in the game.

As Engadget points out, the offenses committed by LeagueSharp extends beyond simply providing users with cheat tools for about $15 a month since it also reportedly decided to go on the offensive against Riot Games. On top of actually attacking the gaming company’s servers, the defendants supposedly released personal information of one of Riot’s employees.  

This act launched the case from being a simple violation of the DMCA to one bordering on criminal behavior. That no one was arrested by the time the lawsuit was concluded is remarkable.