League of Legends’ new character isn’t based on a real person, says Riot

Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, denied a claim that a new playable character was inspired by a real person.

Yesterday, a former student named Stephanie posted a blog on Medium describing her relationship with a former Riot Games employee who linked her to the creation of a new champion named Seraphine. Stephanie alleged that during a brief relationship with an anonymous Riot Games employee (only referred to as “John”) in 2019, he repeatedly said the company was working on content inspired by her.

John has left Stephanie with a number of clues about an upcoming character skin or K / DA related project, with Riot’s alternate K-Star girl group comprising several League of Legends champions. He also used her access to the company to encourage her to visit him in Los Angeles, in part on the premise that she could “double down” for an upcoming project.

Since that relationship ended, Stephanie has noticed a number of uncomfortable connections between Seraphine’s exit and John’s comments. Deployment of Seraphine included included a twitter account for a version of the character who lived in our world, making his own first visit to Los Angeles to join K / DA. Stephanie alleged that some of the art on this account resembled her own Instagram posts.

Now, Riot says these similarities are superficial. “Seraphine was independently created by Riot Games and was not based on any individual, including Stephanie,” the company told Gamasutra in an emailed statement. “Additionally, the former employee Stephanie refers to left Riot over a year ago and was in a department and role that has nothing to do with the creative design process.”

“We take all allegations of embezzlement seriously and immediately investigated Stephanie’s allegations after receiving a legal notice from her lawyer last month. We confirmed that his claim that Seraphine was the basis of Seraphine was unfounded, communicated it to his attorney and invited him to continue discussing the facts with us. We are still waiting for a response. “

Although Riot Games disputes that their champion design team took inspiration from Stephanie, it did lend credence to Stephanie’s description of John’s unwanted behavior. A spokesperson for the company wrote to Gamasutra that “the behavior she describes was said to have violated several policies.”