A courtroom battle royale is brewing as Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds builders PUBG Corp have filed a copyright swimsuit towards Fortnite Battle Royale studio Epic Games, The Korea Times reports. PUBG Corp declare that Fortnite Battle Royale violates their copyright. While the finer factors of the Korean case haven’t but been made public file, this might be the ‘further action’ contemplated by PUBG Corp’s parent company Bluehole last September.
The first warning indicators of this upcoming authorized battle came last year, with Bluehole vp Chang Han Kim saying “After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known”, particularly that “concerns around User Interface (UI), gameplay and structural replication in the battle royale mode exist”. While we assumed (and hoped) on the time that Bluehole have been merely posturing, this swimsuit suggests in any other case.
While PUBG and Fortnite are each incomprehensibly large successes, the 2 battle royale shooter giants appear to be vying for territory extra actively in Korea at current. The announcement of the authorized case coincides with plans for Epic to increase Fortnite’s attain into the Korean market through a cope with writer Neowiz Games. Epic hope to make Fortnite an everyday fixture throughout the nation’s extremely widespread cyber cafe-like ‘PC Rooms’, and it’s not onerous to see why a direct competitor would possibly wish to disrupt such a transfer.
There are a number of worst-case eventualities that might come of this lawsuit that might hurt extra than simply PUBG Corp and Epic. The most catastrophic can be establishing authorized precedent over the copyrighting of mechanical ideas in a sport. While that will not sound too horrible at first, bear in mind when FPSs have been simply known as Doom Clones? Imagine if Id had the authorized energy to close that each one down and the impact it might have had on the trade, even when it was simply in a single territory.
While I doubt the contract between Epic and PUBG Corp would permit for one thing fairly as drastic, I’m additionally reminded of how Silicon Knights’ disastrous try and sue Epic again in 2007 backfired so badly that Silicon Knights retroactively misplaced their Unreal Engine license and have been compelled to recall and/or destroy each unsold copy of their video games. While I don’t anticipate something fairly so dramatic on this case, regardless of how the case is judged, it’s a reminder of the stakes at play right here.
No date has been introduced for courtroom proceedings but, however we’ll be retaining a detailed eye on this story because it develops.
