In an effort to combat scammers, Riot Games has hit the big red button.

In a bold move, Riot Games has marked all unredeemed skin codes as invalid. As expected, this will have a significant and lasting effect on the variety of League of Legends skin shops out there. If you've got a valid, legitimately-acquired code that's unredeemed, you can contact support to sort things out.

Community Coordinator Riot Draggles took to the forum and laid it out clear:

"Riot is taking action against these scammers at the source. We are working with multiple payment processors to inform them of the situation and recommend they no longer process fraudulent payments from these sites. Additionally we will be deactivating all previously issued skin codes starting today. If you have a skin code that you acquired legitimately please send a request to Player Support and include proof of ownership. We'd be happy to help redeem the content to your account, but please note after 23/07/14 we will no longer be redeeming codes for any reason."

Content/skins that have already been redeemed will not be affected:

"Followup: Player Support will not be retroactively removing content and skins that have already been redeemed prior to this announcement."

One skin shop owner, Andre of lolskinshop, has done an AMA on reddit regarding the issue; it's a pretty interesting perspective. So, what's your take on the situation? Were skins shops an issue worth addressing? Let us know in the comments below!

Colt "ShdwFlm" Casey
Deputy Editor