Riot Responds After Woman Claims Seraphine Was Based On Her
Musical superstar Seraphine might be turning heads for all the right reasons in League of Legends; however, the multiplayer online battle arena's latest addition has found herself in the middle of a media storm as one fan claims the character is based on her.
With her vibrant pink hair and signature specs, Seraphine is about as unique as they come in terms of Champions. If a fictional character was based on you, we're pretty sure you'd know about it - but when it comes to "Stephanie", she thinks the character has stolen her likeness.
Posting on Medium, Stephanie explained her personal journey and why Seraphine is a problematic newcomer to LoL. The crux of the matter goes back to Stephanie's brief relationship with a Riot Games employee in 2019. She's confident this led to her likeness being used to create the K/DA pop princess.
What's the Stephanie/Seraphine story?
In the lengthy story, Stephanie spoke about her relationship with "John". She explained, the pair had a mutual love of LoL, while John came up with Stephanie-inspired skin ideas for her favourite character, Ahri. She said she visited the Riot Games studio and was given artist drawings of herself as Ahri, which she said was "strange".
She continued to claim John wanted her to provide the voice for a top-secret project which she thinks was Seraphine. Despite her and John going their separate ways, Stephanie said she was shocked to see Seraphine's reveal (which was also the same day as her birthday). Stephanie said, "As soon as I saw what she looked like and realised she was going to be a League champion, I started scrolling through her accounts, completely freaked out. My worries only grew, and my heart sank more and more with every post".
Stephanie went on to point out how a lot of her poses seem to match Seraphine and how she thinks her cat was the inspiration for Seraphine's. Instead of putting the blame at John's door, she's instead pointing at Riot. She concluded, "It's a quaint idea, but when you think about it more closely, the idea of a marketing team in some office in Los Angeles trying to sell a product by coming up with the most ~relatable~ and marketable things to tweet out of the account of a 'girl' who coincidentally looks like me, and talks like me, and sounds like me, and draws like me? It just makes me sick".
Despite having "no way to conclusively prove" Seraphine is based on her, Stephanie is standing by her story. Is there more to this twisted tale though? Stephanie's accusations have caught the attention of Riot Games, which has now issued a statement on the matter.
What has Riot Games said about Seraphine?
Despite some thinking there's a lot to Stephanie's claims, Riot maintains there's nothing untoward going on. A Riot spokesperson told PC Gamer, "Seraphine was independently created by Riot Games and was not based on any individual. Additionally, the former employee [Stephanie] is referring to left Riot more than a year ago and was in a department and role that has no input whatsoever into the creative design process".
In October, Senior Game Designer Jeevun Sidhu cited that his wife was the main influence for Seraphine. Also, last month, Stephanie's lawyer sent a legal demand to Riot Games. The defence has said Stephanie's claim “lacks merit” and has invited her side to “further discuss the facts". While Stephanie thinks Seraphine is based on her, Riot is sticking to its guns and is adamant this is just a simple coincidence.
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Images via Riot Games