In an absolutely cursed development, a League of Legends player has concocted a custom skin that takes on the appearance, voice, and mannerisms of Riot Games developer and former League shoutcaster David “Phreak” Turley.
The skin is for Akshan and it is an exact replica of League’s design leader. “This isn’t meant to be offensive or insulting to Phreak,” the creator of the skin said in their original post. “It’s just a little joke, a tiny silly, even.”
The Phreak skin shows the League dev in a recognizable outfit of a black Riot Games t-shirt and jeans, a look that he coined during the early days of League. When moving or attacking, he even drops some of his most noteworthy quotes, including the all-too-infamous slip-up in which he encouraged players to simply type out enemy cooldowns (such as “Karthus ult”) in chat instead of using the click-ping feature.
No Phreak custom skin would be complete without “tons of damage,” either, which became a bit of a catchphrase for him back when he was the voice of the champion spotlight videos during League’s infancy. He drops the three-word classic phrase when unleashing Akshan’s ultimate, Comeuppance.
Phreak is an absolute veteran in the League of Legends scene and has been a figurehead in the game’s community dating back to its earliest days. After originally rising to prominence in the early 2010s after the first esports tournaments for League started to gain traction, Phreak eventually transitioned into a developer role at Riot and is now the lead designer for League. He is usually a liaison between the dev team and the community, as his patch breakdown videos often gain a lot of traction for their insight into the changes that the League devs are making every patch cycle.
The skin’s creator left a link to download the skin in the Reddit comments. Some League fans were nervous about the future of custom skins after the introduction of Riot’s Vanguard software to the game, but many skins still work, even after the anti-cheat update was applied.
