Riot Games recently suffered a ‘social engineering attack’ that compromised the development environment of the company. While the servers were unaffected, the company said that the attack has affected the ability to release new content.
“Earlier this week, systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack. 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 company said in an official tweet on 21 January.
Earlier this week, systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack. 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.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 20, 2023
A Social Engineering Attack usually is done by someone posing as a company employee to extract the system credentials from an authorized person. A popular example is Phishing.
Riot revealed that no user info or player data was accessed during the attack, but the company might take some time to fully secure the systems and the updates might get delayed.
Due to the cyberattack, the company believes that the upcoming patches might also be affected across multiple games. The company has made some of the biggest esports titles like Valorant, League of Legends, Team Fight Tactics and Wild Rift are expected to be affected.
Fans have been informed by League Studio CEO Andrei van Roon that everything slated for Patch 13.2 will be published, just a bit later. While the development team continues to work around-the-clock to try and implement as many improvements as possible, updates that can’t be hotfixed, such changes to the artwork, will come later.
Official Valorant did not confirm any delay in any content and patches, which can be due to the release of recent balance patch after the release of the Indian-themed map called Lotus and the beginning of the latest season called “Revelation”.
Riot Games also partnered with Global Esports from India for the upcoming Valorant Champions Tour. The move was done after the company learned about the massive competitive player base and the rise of online gaming in the country.
Valorant and League of Legends are two of the biggest esports games, with more than 15 million players logging in almost daily. With the increase in the popularity of online gaming, cyberattacks are now much more frequent.