Riot Games has temporarily disabled the League of Legends (opens in new tab) character Neeko after she unexpectedly developed the ability to transform into a giant tower capable of killing enemy players with a single blow.

Neeko is actually a shapeshifter: according to her character bio (opens in new tab), she can "blend into any crowd by borrowing the appearance of others, and can even absorb something of their emotional state to instantly distinguish friend from foe. Her passive ability allows her to assume the appearance of an ally champion: while in disguise, she can make basic attacks, but if she takes damage, she reverts to her true form.

In any case, that is how it works. However, a new bug was recently discovered that allows Neeko to transform into a tower. Specifically, a type of turret called Nexus Obelisk, which has the highest structural damage in the game; according to the LoL fan wiki (opens in new tab), this tower is actually designed as a defensive killing machine: to keep enemy players from spawn camping, It is placed near the spawn platform.

This clip by League streamer Vandiril clearly illustrates the problem:

And here is a view from the other side of the coin, a player taking a one-hit kill from a transformed Neeko:

As you can imagine, one character's ability to immediately transform into one of these one-hit-kill fortresses anywhere on the map completely unbalances the game. This basically amounts to a major showdown between Anakin Skywalker and the youngsters: there is no defense against it.

Therefore, Riot was forced to disable Neeko.

Some Riot players on Reddit were surprised that this could happen, given that Nexus Obelisks are fixed turrets, not characters." How is such a bug possible?" Rumbleinthejungle8 (opens in new tab) asked. 'It must be a real mess in the game's code for such a thing to be possible. I guess it's not just a meme that everything is coded as a minion."

This refers to the fact that non-minions are also coded as "minions" in League of Legends; this Reddit post from 2015 (opens in new tab) elaborates on that: almost everything in the game is coded as a vary widely in complexity, but share basic, fundamental features.

"The expression "everything is a minion" is more or less correct, but it is closer to "everything is an object" than "everything is a lane minion," RiotXypherous explains in his post. "Lane minions have models, animations, and AI that are not found in basic minion objects (depending on which ones are used, but I believe they are all idle cubes).

Some players have suggested that the problem may simply be a failed or mistaken entity type check, but the fact that Neeko has been disabled for over 24 hours suggests that the problem is more serious than a simple script error . Of course, the timing is also not ideal: in the US, November 24 is the Thanksgiving holiday, which is a time of food, booze, and football (I'm Canadian, so I'm not super clear on the details of this ritual. So that's another reason why this Neeko obelisk thing might take a little longer than usual to resolve.

Be that as it may, the Neeko bug is yet another example of the challenges faced by live game developers who have to deal with a steady stream of updates that constantly change the characters, world, and gameplay. It's the nature of the beast: in October, Blizzard was forced to disable Bastion and Torbjörn (open in new tab) in Overwatch 2. Two weeks later, Mei (open in a new tab) was disabled because it moved just a bit easier than it should have. Riot was forced to pull the plug on Valorant's new hero Harbor (opens in new tab) last week after Ultimate also went haywire.

There is no indication at this time as to when Neeko will be back: Riot Games refused to comment on the situation or offer a possible date for the character's return.