In September of 2017, Playerunknown Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp, a subsidiary of Korean game company Bluehole, claimed that they were considering taking Fortnite dev Epic Games to court. PUBG Corp claims that Fortnite's Battle Royale mode copied too much from PUBG's own mode, ranging from the gameplay to the UI. They also state that PUBG Corp had been talking to Epic Games throughout PUBG's development, as it uses Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4, and that the company had taken their idea, and added it onto their already existing Fortnite game. Recently, a copyright claim was supposedly filed in Korea by Bluehole, and will go to the courts in Seoul.

This isn't the first time we've seen Bluehole go to court, either. In the Northern California district courts, PUBG Corp took NetEase to court over copyright concerns with a 155-page document describing how NetEase's mobile titles Rules of Survival and Knives Out battle royale games stole the concept from Playerunknown Battlegrounds. Bluehole also tried to claim they had the sole ability to use frying pans as weapons in video games. Fortnite is set to officially become available in Korea soon (published by NeoWiz) but this lawsuit might delay things.

The last time Epic Games was sued, it was by Silicon Knights, for the game Too Human; as Epic allegedly breaching their contract. The suit was dismissed, and Epic counter-sued Silicon Knights, forcing the company to permanently recall their game from sale and pay 4.45 million to Epic Games.

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[Hells Malice]

Another nothing case that'll go nowhere.

It's just a gamble. There'd be big money to be gained winning this, but it's a pretty stupid gamble. They're basically betting a single number on a roulette table.

 

[ShonenJump]

Sony also used Nintendo concept of a gaming system when they worked together and made their own new system with it. Nothing wrong with that just don't use the original assets

 

[Joe88]

Hope epic games countersues them and causes them to go under

 

[Reploid]

Sounds like someone wants free money is all.

I wonder if minecraft developer gonna sue epic as well.

 

[BLsquared]

I know this is a bit different, but several years back Tetris Holdings won a suit against someone who was selling a Tetris clone on the App Store (Mino, it might have been called?), although that was due to the clone looking indistinguishable from Tetris to the normal eye, leading to the stealing of profits. It was made clear that the mechanics of the game cannot be copyrighted, but the exact look is. So from that, Bluehole will probably lose, unless the court finds the games exactly the same, which it won't.
Just my take on it I guess.

 

[AutumnWolf]

If you can't beat them...
Uhh...
Try to beat them in court?

(What?)

 

[Purplstuph]

Pans as weapons.
Team Fortress 2 did it first

 

[MrLucariox]

Dude then the weapon inventors must take the PUBG to the court if the weapons are patented inventions. This is unessecary.
Bluehole is just scared to lose their community. Btw i gave the weapon example bc its nonsense like that. Sorry for bad grammar.

 

[Jayro]

Fortnite was in development first, so pubg can suck it.

 

[Zhongtiao1]

Wait... Doesn't Tencent own PUBG now? Or at least a controlling stake?

 

[Foxi4]

They're obviously doing this because PUBG is losing their playerbase to Fortnite which is a far more refined game. PUBG servers have low tick rates and the game is broken in many ways, people are leaving and there's nothing they can do about it. Neither Fortnite nor PUBG have invented mass multiplayer shooters, I'm old enough to remember Tribes. Last Man Standing isn't particularly new either, it used to be a traditional, staple game mode. The only thing PUBG brought into gaming was the shrinking map concept and that’s literally lifted from the Battle Royale franchise, they can't possibly claim that it's an original idea.

 

[TinyBilbo]

First time I heard of "Battle Royale" was the movie from 2000

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/

Yup.. Everyone running around (whilst exploring and finding weapons) killing each other 'till the last (wo)man standing!
I thought everything after that was a rip of it! (Hunger Games I'm looking at you!).

Although it can be argued that the "Battle Royale" mode is only really a sub-genre of the original Doom or Quake Deathmatch!...

 

[pedro702]

I hope Epic Games loses. I played both and it is too obvious that too much was copied.

why would they loose? you cant own gaming mechanics... or else nintendo would sue every kart racer ever made and only mario kart would remain...

you cant copyright game modes or game styles at all, or else all gaming would die really.

 

[Kigiru]

Are they trying to limit the development of new genre by copyrights?
I don't play survival battle royale games (or whatever it's called), but i'm realy concerned that practices like this will spread over other genres and gaming styles which will be pretty much an apocalypse for gaming. Imagine if Nintendo would copyright side-scrolling platformers because of SMB or Capcom copyright competetive fighting games because of SF2...

 

[Arras]

There's no way the pubg devs will win and they really shouldn't win. That said, Chinese clone games are a real problem l, especially on mobile, and being unable to sue over mechanics make it a very thin line and hard to do anything about, especially for smaller devs.

 

[KevinLSX]

Id love to see how this goes

 

[KingVamp]

I also don't believe they will win this. Reminds me of the company that sued Nintendo over the Switch.

Honestly, as someone pointed out, they just seem to be setting themselves to be counter sued.

 

[Edgarska]

Sad, but not surprising. PUBG is dying because of a mixture of dev incompetence and competition, so they have to resort to litigation. If you can't beat the competition fairly, then remove the competition.

That frying pan thing was extra stupid though, Peach had a frying pan in SSBM in 2001, and I'm sure some other games must have used one even before that.

 

[The Catboy]

I really hope they lose this. PUBG isn't really an original game and they really can't own a game mechanic. Fortnite may have used the same idea, but they very clearly made a far more original game in comparison. Not to mention PUBG is really just an Unreal asset-flip with the only redeeming identity being the game mechanic that they weren't the first to use.

 

[CallmeBerto]

Haha hahaha

Wait...your serious?

Let me laugh even harder!

Copy game mechanics lol no....give me a break this is just one last desperate attempt by a dying company.


Can't beat them?....sue them?