Riot Games to pause updates after social engineering attack

Video game developer and esports organizer Riot Games was affected by a social engineering cyberattack last week, the company announced on January 20.

The attack, which compromised multiple systems, affects the company’s ability to release content, as well as other operations at the company, including patching. A senior official at Riot Games clarified that the latest update scheduled for this week will still go out but other changes will be held. 

Unfortunately, this has temporarily affected our ability to release content. While our teams are working hard on a fix, we expect this to impact our upcoming patch cadence across multiple games.

— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 20, 2023

“We don’t have all the answers right now, but we wanted to communicate early and let you know there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained,” the developer said on Friday afternoon

“Please be patient with us as we work through this, and we’ll keep you posted as we continue our investigation.”

The company did not respond to requests for comment about the specifics of the social engineering incident.

Riot Games, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent, is best known as the creator of the popular game series League of Legends. The company runs lucrative esports tournaments centered around the game, including 12 international competitions.

The League of Legends account on Twitter warned players that the latest update may end up being delayed but added that the developers are “working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still.”

Heads up, players. This may impact our delivery date for Patch 13.2. The League team is working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still. https://t.co/DJ8qAKSdQi

— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) January 20, 2023

Game developers have continued to face a barrage of cyber threats after several high profile attacks on the biggest names in the industry. 

Confidential internal data, including footage from the next highly-anticipated installment of its Grand Theft Auto series, was stolen from Rockstar Games last September by hackers, and Bandai Namco dealt with a ransomware attack in July.

In 2020, the Ragnar Locker ransomware group attacked Capcom in 2020, and Egregor ransomware gang hit both Ubisoft and Crytek. CD Projekt Red – the Polish game developer behind titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series – was hit by the HelloKitty ransomware group in 2021, and that same year access to Electronic Arts games and servers was put up for sale following a hack. 

Meanwhile, Riot Games has previously dealt with a scam that lured eager applicants into handing over banking information and other sensitive data by dangling fraudulent job postings and interviews with fake human resources representatives.