Riot Games’ operations haven’t exactly gone smoothly months ever since the end of season 1 Arcane, Riot’s League of Legends-inspired Netflix series, as they recently issued a DMCA takedown to a minor artist who drew an “Arcane Flames” comic that has nothing to do with their ‘intellectual property’.
Artist KuttySarkArt received a copyright-related takedown just this week. The takedown notice appears to be for using the term “Arcane” in a portrayal of one of KuttySarkArt’s original characters on the merchandise marketplace TeePublic.
Just recently, Ukrainian artist KuttySark asked for help on Twitter after Riot Games filed a copyright takedown notice for her t-shirt design.
“The only thing I can do is to speak here.”
Riot Games responds to the copyright claim
The artist’s plight drew a lot of attention from fans and the community who tried to assist her in her efforts to get the design back up and running. Fans saw the copyright claim as blatant overreach on the part of the League of Legends developer.
Fortunately, the League of Legends community responded and the artists were supported. They ultimately provided enough information to allow the problem to be resolved.
Riot Games reacted quickly to the matter, delivering a comment on the DMCA claim the next day. Riot claims to have several teams and even third-party agencies assisting in the protection of the company’s ‘intellectual property’. This breadth of operation can lead to mistakes like this one, but Riot says it’s looking into it right now.
The event had already gone viral and had reached the top post in the League of Legends subreddit by the time Riot Games issued a response. Fans are clearly outraged by Riot Games’ attack on an independent artist for using the term “Arcane”. Fortunately for the artist, Riot has admitted that the takedown request was made in an accident.