A closer look
One of the most lucrative e-sports on the planet is basically a massively monetized bootleg. Riot Games didn't exactly invent the MOBA genre; they just shamelessly polished a community mod. The founders were obsessed with 'Defense of the Ancients,' a custom map built entirely inside Blizzard's Warcraft III using free assets. They simply hired a few of the volunteer modders, filed off the copyrighted serial numbers, created a standalone client, and accidentally birthed a billion-dollar toxic empire.
