Recently, a controversial post surfaced on the League of Legends Reddit forum, stirring quite a heated debate among the international gaming community. The content of this post features a comparison image between “the 2020 skin of the hero Miya in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, recently revealed,” and the Soraka Winter Wonder skin in League of Legends.
It’s evident that while these two images have different designs, the main character is identical, from the outfit, hairstyle to the long, pointed ears characteristic of Soraka, all depicted in the image claimed to be “the 2020 skin of the hero Miya in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.”
This has sparked a fierce backlash from the League of Legends community, primarily criticizing the “blatant copying” behavior of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
However, after thorough investigation, it turns out that the leaked image of Miya’s skin did not appear on any official media of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and according to official information from the developer, this character is not on the list of skins to be released in the near future.
In other words, the image claimed to be “exactly like Soraka” is merely a fan art, created by someone who attached unverified information, leading many players to mistakenly believe that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has audaciously copied the design of Soraka’s Winter Wonder skin in League of Legends for a hero skin.
As a result, a wave of criticism from certain League of Legends players has erupted fiercely, especially since these two gaming communities have never quite seen eye to eye.
Speaking of the “strained relationship” between the developers of League of Legends and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, in 2018, Riot Games sued the game company Shanghai Moonton for using many of League of Legends’ copyrighted images and character design ideas without permission in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
The outcome was that Riot Games won the lawsuit, and Moonton had to pay a compensation of up to $2.9 million (approximately 66.8 billion VND). However, afterwards, this developer continued to face criticism from the League of Legends community for borrowing ideas, such as the 515 UNITE BANG BANG music video having a storyline and visual effects very similar to Pop Star, while the Teaser Trailer for Terizla was also indistinguishable from that of Sylas.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the League of Legends community reacts sharply to the unclear origin of the image mentioned above, as there is a precedent of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang copying ideas from League of Legends.