Riot Games and the Culture of Copying
Riot Games are Copy-Pussycats.
Riot Games promotes itself as a leader in creative development. A closer look shows a consistent pattern of copying other developers’ work. League of Legends was built on the foundation and sabotage of DotA Allstars. Valorant copies elements from Counter-Strike by Valve Corporation and Overwatch by Blizzard Entertainment. Teamfight Tactics is based on Dota Auto Chess. Legends of Runeterra mimics Hearthstone by Blizzard Entertainment. All of these are US companies.
Riot does not innovate. It has one central business strategy of swipe, sabotage and rebrand. This is called theft and business fraud. They follow the lead of US gaming companies, swipe ideas, concepts, code and developers with insider secrets, then repackage, and use black budgets to market them as original. This copying is not limited to mechanics or gameplay. Riot's flagship series Arcane is swiped from my manuscript of Bloodborg: The Harvest.
They are engaging in economic warfare, primarily against The US markets. They hack, swipe and copy and sabotage, mix N match, then sell worse products back to the public and industries they steal from, in a hyper competitive, toxic and addictive closed cult which spreads dictatorship communist propaganda and incites unrest, and “Rioting” with its anti US messages and pro-social surveillance and social credit systems, which undermine state and federal law as Riot uses the closed community to spread values and messages aligned closely with the cultural values of Tencent, its parent company, which is tied to the Chinese government. This includes systems of censorship, hacking, control, and surveillance. Riot’s content reflects those systems more than it reflects open, democratic creative ideals.
Riot also undermines original creators. It takes ideas, alters them just enough to avoid immediate comparison, and then presents them as its own. This creates a cycle where developers and writers are pushed aside while Riot benefits from the work of others which is fraud and anti-competitive business practices. It then uses unethical legal teams to bully, lie and present fraudulent evidence to the court whilst spoliating real evidence.
There is now an active copyright lawsuit against Riot Games in the United States. The plaintiff claims that Riot used the manuscript Bloodborg: The Harvest as a blueprint for Arcane. The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff submitted the work to Riot Forge in 2020, and that Arcane includes detailed, specific elements from the original manuscript. These include character designs, narrative structure, trauma representation, and visual storytelling methods.
The situation has worsened. Webpages from Riot Forge that once showed public submission forms have disappeared from the Internet Archive. These pages are central to the plaintiff’s claim that Riot had access to the original work. Removing them during litigation raises serious questions. It suggests Riot may be hiding or destroying evidence. This reflects a company more focused on covering its tracks than addressing the claims honestly.
The public, developers, and industry professionals should pay attention. Riot’s repeated pattern of copying, suppression, and redirection damages the creative community. It discourages originality, exploits new talent, and rewards those who take rather than build. It’s also the tip of a very dark iceberg of warfare.
We are in a Warm War of espionage, IP Theft, Data Harvesting, Economic, Cultural, Social and Neurocognitive Warfare. Riot Games is not on our side. In fact, it’s a weapon of all of the above, a tool of destruction.
Riot Games has built its success by “borrowing” from others. It is time to question whether that success was earned, or stolen.
I ask, could any reasonable and sane US jury look at Riot’s history and behaviours and conclude that they are safe to operate in the US?
M.W. Wolf Ltd.
