As announced yesterday, the legal battle between League of Legends developer Riot and the hacker site LeagueSharp has ended. The settlement reached in court provides for $ 10 million in compensation for Riot. Likewise, the operators of the site are banned from all riot games. As well as handing over control of the website to Riot.

The history

LeagueSharp made so-called hacks and scripts available for a monthly fee that gave the player an unfair advantage in Riot's top title League of Legends. With a 15$ monthly membership up to the 50$ Premium Service, which made it possible to automate several League accounts at the same time, the presumed income amounted to several hundred thousand dollars per month

In August 2016, Riot filed a lawsuit against the three founders of the Peru-based company. The allegation was of violation of Riot's DMCA. A US law to protect digital rights, because the hacks bypassed the anti-cheat software.

With the agreement and ruling signed by US Judge Lew, LeagueSharp is effectively put on hold. Riot has also set an important precedent. Previously, hacker sites for popular games were mostly undetectable. Or many developers shied away from the costs of finding the operator of an illegal site from the farthest corner of Russia or South America.

It remains to be seen how many other developers will be encouraged to take similar steps after this case. Hopefully this will open the way to dealing with the deluge of unfair and illegal tools that exist for many popular games.

Nonetheless, this is a first step towards fairer competition in League of Legends.