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League of Legends Dev Loses Court Case to Soccer Star Edgar Davids

Riot, creators of League of Legends, lost a lawsuit to a former professional soccer player Edgar Davids for taking his likeness in creating a Lucien skin.

June 30, 2019

Riot, the famous company within the gaming industry known for releasing League of Legends, recently lost a lawsuit to a former professional soccer player Edgar Davids. Davids sued Riot for taking his likeness in designing a League of Legends character skin.

For those who don’t know, Edgar Davids played for various top tier teams in soccer such as Juventus, Barcelona. Not to mention Tottenham Hotspur from the UK Premier League side. He also appeared on previous games such as FIFA and is featured as FIFA 2003’s front cover art.

The character skin in question is for a League of Legends character called Lucien. The skin was appropriately named “Striker Lucien.”

Davids’ defense claimed that Striker Lucien’s skin color, hair, muscular posture, sports goggles and his aggressive play style in the game was based on himself. Davids took Riot to court where the Dutch judge agreed that he had the right to protect his likeness.

To help back David’s claims, the prosecution presented a tweet from 2014 posted by Riot’s former QA tester. The tweet stated: “for all you wondering, Striker Lucian was inspired by soccer pro Edgar Davids.”

Despite Riot’s defense that fans would not mistake a fictional character for a real life sportsman, Riot lost the case. Now the next process is for the auditors to estimate how much Riot owes Davids in compensation. In order for this to happen Riot must estimate how much money they made from the “Striker Lucien” skin.

Riot games is estimated to have 100 million monthly users on League of Legends so it’s very possible that the compensation may be quite large.

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