PUBG Corp Settles With NetEase Over Copycat Lawsuit
Last year, PUBG Corp, makers of ... well, PUBG ... took legal action against NetEase for a pair of free-to-play battle royale games -- Knives Out and Rules of Survival -- made by the latter that bore striking similarities to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
We showed off some of the "copycat" accusations from the legal filing when we wrote about this last April, and while there were a number of uncanny resemblances, this is a Chinese game company (NetEase) we're talking about. Copying Western games is something like 90% of their business (rough estimate).
Now we've learned that the two companies have come to a settlement regarding the matter, as reported by McArthur Law (and spotted by Gamasutra). It is noted that NetEase made 21 updates to Knives Out, including nine after litigation was brought, to patch out the supposed similarities between the two games.
We'll likely never know what the details of the settlement were, but if they don't require one side to treat the other to a chicken dinner, then that's a legal failure of the most epic proportions.
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Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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And copying combat and other mechanics is not that bad, but straight up copying everything and try to sell it as their own is disgusting. For example Aura Kingdom is very much a Taiwanese WoW clone, but it has an anime theme and looks nothing like WoW, it's not even structured like WoW since all characters/classes start in only one location and they have done things like professions and crafting (Cooking/Fishing) in their own unique way. I'd go as far as to say they did crafting better than WoW, especially the fishing is very fun.