A fan-made League of Legends simulator designed to replicate real pro matches has been decommissioned following pressure from Riot Games.
Simulator “MyLolSim” was created by developer and LoL fan Marcus, who goes by the username “Schlafen.” An in-game user of MyLoLSim could go into detail designing their own team, including options such as creating players with their own names and assigning specific pick orders.
The objective was to allow a user to experiment with strategies and team compositions. The simulator was live for just three days and quickly gained a large following before it was shut it down after the creator was contacted by Riot Games.
Schlafen states that Riot Games didn’t force him to dismantle the simulator, but did warn that the project was likely to get shut down. The creator explains that he chose to close MyLolSim in order to avoid a possible lawsuit.Â
“It was just a fun project I made, because I thought it would be nice/funny, I didn’t expect to get such a huge and great community at all…Please do not blame them for being protective about their IP, it’s their right to do that,” Schlafen said. “It was a great time and thanks for all your support.”
Followers are nevertheless agitated by the removal of this intriguing fan project. A number of Reddit users argued that Riot shouldn’t have pulled the plug on MyLolSim. They contrasted the handling of this situation to other fan-developed projects whose companies that owned the copyrighted material never touched such as Pokémon Showdown or Half-Life recreation Black Mesa.
Other users suggested that Schlafen should use the existing work to create his own MOBA simulator with no connection to the League of Legends IP. Schlafen later announced that he is pursuing this alternative and will continue to develop his project under an alternate title and with new original assets.
MyLolSim is gone, but Schlafen is hard at work to bring back a new version of his project to the users who enjoyed the brief time they had with the original simulator.
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