Riot Games has sued a mobile developer for allegedly stealing character designs, dialogue, and other content from League of Legends in a game called I Am Hero: AFK Tactical Teamfight.
Reuters reports that I Am Hero developer Imba Technology allegedly “copied paragraphs of text from ‘League of Legends’ verbatim, in addition to using characters with nearly identical visual designs, names, abilities and background stories to heroes from Riot’s game.”
It seems like Imba Technology copied more than just some lore: I Am Hero’s basic concept (as well as the AFK Tactical Teamfight tagline) is similar to that of Riot’s own League of Legends spin-off, Teamfight Tactics, which the company released on Android and iOS in 2020.
Riot Games wasn’t the only one to notice these similarities. Reviews for I Am Hero on the Google Play Store mention that “ALL of the characters are stolen from LoL,” for example, or that “they’ve also heavily copied league of legends characters from character design to even only changing a single letter (Zac changed to Zak, Viktor changed to Victor, etc.).”
Other reviews claim that I Am Hero ripped off AFK Arena “with knock-off characters from LoL, Dota, and others.” There are also allegations of Imba Technology gaming the Google Play Store by using bots to submit five-star reviews that counteract the one-star reviews from real players.
Yet the game’s been downloaded more than 500,000 times, according to the Google Play Store’s statistics, and maintains a rating of 3.8 stars. Its rating is even higher on the App Store, where it has a 4.5 out of 5-star average with 248 ratings. (Apple doesn’t share download numbers.)
Reuters says that Riot Games sent Imba Technology a cease-and-desist related to I Am Hero in December 2021, but that Imba denied any infringement of Riot’s copyright. Riot Games reportedly wants the US District Court to block sales of the game and award it damages.
Neither Riot Games nor Imba Technology immediately responded to request for comment.
