Last week, we shared a trailer for a new indie fighting game called League of Fighters, which is based off Riot Games’ popular League of Legends franchise. While it was exciting to see another fan-made fighter enter the arena, Instaburst’s reveal also came with a bit of uneasiness. Now that they were openly showcasing the game, would Riot hand down a cease and desist similar to what we saw happen with Fighting is Magic?

Luckily, that appears to be a course of action Riot Games is uninterested in following. They recently got back to the folks at Instaburst with an official response, saying that they are allowed to use the League of Legends IP so long as they keep the game free-to-play and only take in ad revenue. There are, of course, guidelines to using the property, but Instaburst totally falls in line with their rules and has been given Riot’s blessing.

They have also opened the floodgates for similar projects to find traction, according to an addition to the company’s legal page:

We’ll start with our golden rule – you can use League of Legends IP as the basis for a fan project that you’re giving away for free or that’s only generating ad revenue (we’ll refer to this type of free fan project as a “Project”), as long as you comply with the guidelines outlined below for using our IP (the “Guidelines”). As a matter of fact, as long as you comply with our Guidelines, we think it’s great if you create awesome, free and original content for League of Legends fans.

After watching what went down with Hasbro and Mane6 earlier this year, it’s great to see Riot Games so open to the idea of fans expanding the League of Legends franchise with outside-the-box projects. We would like to congratulate Instaburst on this fortuitous turn of events and commend Riot for allowing development to continue.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the League of Fighters trailer yet, we’ve included it below.

Source: Instaburst, tip via Alan B.