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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds certainly can’t claim to have been the progenitor of the Battle Royale format, but this doesn’t mean that the developers and publisher have no rights to certain aspects of the game itself. That’s why PUBG Corp. hasn’t sued Fortnite Battle Royale just yet, but it is filing a lawsuit against a copycat that went a little too far.
The progenitor of the Chicken Dinner prize trend is suing the Chinese video game company, NetEase, the developer of mobile games like Rules of Survival and Knives Out. Anyone who has been visiting gaming channels on YouTube would have likely seen ads for these games at some point and noticed how embarrassingly similar they are to PUBG. PUBG Corp. noticed this too, hence the lawsuit, Ars Technica reports.
Just for some context on just how far NetEase went to copy PUBG, it’s not just a 100-player Battle Royale game on an island where the players are dropped from a plane and parachute into, and then fight to survive until the last one standing while an ever-shrinking dome forces everyone to a certain spot. The look, feel, and even gameplay mechanics all copy PUBG.
Its only real difference from the PC and Xbox One version before the official PUBG Mobile game came out is the controls. All in all, PUBG Corp. listed about 25 items that it considers as copyright infringements.
Many of them can be argued are not specific to PUBG, such as the pre-match lobby. However, 100 players specifically jumping out of an airplane to parachute into an island does seem particularly PUBG.
The most astonishing aspect of the lawsuit, however, is the part about NetEase’s use of the iconic “Winner winner chicken dinner” that has become practically synonymous with PUBG in order to market its copycat mobile games. Even in the best case scenario, this can be considered a clever use of a recognizable phrase that could still constitute a violation.
As a result of these supposed infringements, PUBG Corp. is asking the courts to force NetEase to pay for damages and to have the games banned from operation.
