French gaming company Ubisoft filed a lawsuit last Friday against Google and Apple for selling Area F2, which it claims to be a clone of its hit title Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege. The news come from a Bloomberg report, which quotes Ubisoft as saying that “virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen, and everything in between.” You can spot the similarities by yourself in the gameplay video below from the official Area F2 YouTube channel:

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Area F2 was developed by Ejoy.com, which e-commerce giant Alibaba acquired in 2017. However, Ubisoft is suing Google and Apple for hosting the game on their storefronts as filing a copyright infringement claim against Ejoy.com could be more challenging as the company is located in China. Pulling it from Google Play and the Apple Store would thus deprive Area F2’s developer from significant revenue but the game could still be side-loaded.

UPDATE:

Speaking to Kotaku, Ubisoft has confirmed that it is dropping the lawsuit against Apple and Google following Ejoy's termination of Area F2.

SOURCE, UPDATE

 

[FAST6191]

But we’re talking about Area F2. I want to point out that while Gameloft games are clones of their console/PC counterparts, they’re not completely ripoffs since they do have their own story, characters, weapons, etc. Area F2 is a shot by shot ripoff. The UI, characters, maps, almost everything looks exactly like Siege. It’s literally Siege Mobile, something you never usually hear when it comes to Modern Combat or Gangstar. Because of this, it gained a lot of popularity and Ubisoft didn’t like it cause the team stole 99% of their game.

From their document and watching


I can not get to shot for shot rip off.

The UI was different/standard for the gameplay style, different textures, very different levels (if they had all the same lines, all the same corners... then sure but this was not that from their own filing), the weapons were similar (and I do question whether they had the nod for real names but that is the gun companies rather than Ubisoft) but modern theoretically realistic military/spec ops/special police shooter is reasonably limited here and even then the layouts themselves were not the same in the filing.

Was it cashing in on a trend? Oh no doubt. Was it in any way something I care to oppose if playing lawyer? Can't get there from what Ubisoft themselves filed (and I would like to believe they tried to play a strong hand as an opening). If someone else has a better analysis than Ubisoft provided I am all ears though. I would also not be surprised if some lawyer was involved in its creation to see how close they could walk the line. As a gamer? Also can't get there, not least of all because "don't like it, don't play it" is happily in effect for this one and competition is fun.

 

[Jonnysert]

Add in game chat system because its hard to COMMUNICATE when i cant even do proper call outs for teammates, id perfer saying something more than just watch out for vertical attacks or enemy ahead. I love this game just please add that