PUBG Corp Settles With NetEase Over Copycat Lawsuit

Jason Winter
By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted:
Share:

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.

Related Articles

Share:
Got a news tip? Contact us directly here!
In this article: NetEase, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Knives Out, Rules of Survival, PUBG Corp.

About the Author

Jason Winter
Jason Winter, News Editor

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.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Discussion (3)

putler looser 5 years ago
Cant believe someone playing this boredom, over and over and over and over and over again the same ,hang better then this !
Rawasa 5 years ago
Well...what qualifies Aura Kingdom as a WoW clone then? or is it everything that came out after WoW in your eyes? lol
Allwynd 5 years ago
I always find it disgusting when Chinese companies straight up copy something successful and don't make something on their own. Like those WoW clone MMORPGs - Runes of Magic and 4Story. And now PUBG. If they at least made their own thing like Ring of Elysium or an MMORPG with its own unique theme, I'd appreciate them more and give them the benefit of the doubt. And to this day, I still want to play a Chinese MMORPG that plays like WoW (preferably Vanilla) and has a theme like War of the Three Kingdoms or Wuxia martial arts, or both into one game...

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.

Read Next

You May Enjoy