PUBG Corp Files Lawsuit Against Epic Games for Fortnite Battle Royale Concept
Did Epic Games steal the concept for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds? Is it a concept that can even be stolen? That may be up for the courts to decide, as PUBG Corp has officially filed suit.
Remember when Epic Games released Fortnite's Battle Royale mode and the folks at publisher Bluehole Studios took umbrage to this, accusing Epic Games of stealing the core concept of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds? We all had a few laughs over in the comments, but it's well over six months after the accusations were first made and the Korea-based PUBG Corp still isn't laughing. In fact, they've taken their saber rattling a step further.
According to a Korea Times report (via Game Informer, PUBG Corp has officially filed suit against Epic Games for Fortnite's use of the Battle Royale concept. The report cites that PUBG Corp originally filed an injunction against Epic back in January.
This move comes days after Epic detailed its plans to officially get into esports. It also comes days after Epic announced plans to expand Fortnite Battle Royale into Asia by collaborating with Neowiz Games.
The suit was filed in South Korea's Seoul Central District Court. The court will decide in the near future whether this lawsuit will go to trial.
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replyOzzie Mejia posted a new article, PUBG Corp Files Lawsuit Against Epic Games for Fortnite Battle Royale Concept
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They are rather specific,
-user interface/mini-map implementation, healing system, crosshair overlay and this is dumb af the exact number of players in the mode.
And while I don't agree with most of it, epic kinda has it coming in the blatant way they went around namedropping pubg in marketing (which is those folks at least "officially" were pissed of about, its a complete dick move to lease out the engine, then use their brand to market your own clone).
Fortnite went from a soulless randomly crammed together clone of every popular game (minecraft/towerdefense/zombie mode with a generic comic look) stuck in development hell forever, to a competent clone of pubg and now slowly is developing its own flavor.
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all those things are similar to other implementations that have been "cloned" back and forth in the game industry for decades. I have a hard time seeing pubg win here.
They did use PUGB in their initial press release, which is superdumb, but they removed it almost instantly and didn't do it again afaik.
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Do you think H1Z1 is pissed?
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I thought Tencent was looking to invest more in Bluehole? Is this their answer?
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Hey, while we're at it, maybe id can sue every developer that's made a deathmatch mode in FPS.
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don't give bethesda any ideas
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Given that they are owned by zenimax its not unlikely but their masters are probably too busy driving studios into financial ruin so it can buy them up on the cheap (unless you are humanhead studios and managed to fend them off somehow). Dudes haven't even spent those 500mill moneyhats and have already turned around to sue samsung.
Going after mojang for the use of the word "scrolls" didn’t make any money.
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In the process they fucked consumers and splash damage and humanhead pretty good though.
Remember brinks stellar post launch support, they made Bank on pre-orders and bailed (you think they paid out bonus money :) ? They never released nix dedicated servers) .
The only way to run the game is windows server binaries.
We are talking about the same assholes that spear headed nickel and dime shemes and horse armor at the price mobile and some indy games are sold.
Also arcane and its talent seems like a pretty good studio to pick up.-
Splash Damage got out of Brink and immediately created a self-publishing company. I really think they would have refused to work on the DLC for that game if they hadn't been contractually obligated to do so. I get the impression that they HATED working with Bethesda.
InXile seems to have been crippled for a couple of years by working with Bethesda, finally clawing their way out with Wasteland 2.
Human Head looks like they're still scrambling, but hopefully they can get back on their feet with their new Rune game.
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Also keep in mind they are suing in South Korea.
They likely would fail in the US where gameplay cannot be considered copyrightable. S.Korea is likely different given the flood of mobile clones there, the law may favor them. (Epic has a S. Korean studio, hence the ability to sue them there). -
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I hear 2k copied EA's basketball game.
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This is how game design has always worked though. Doom clone, GTA clone, etc, etc.
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Haha, good luck fellas. Every successful game in history has been copied by its competitors at least this much. They had plenty of time to build a lead and they got beat fair and square.
I will admit it is unusual for the owners of a game engine to so thoroughly steal the lunch of a game that was made on their own engine. But there's no rule against it - if there was then Epic wouldn't be able to make games at all. That's business.-
A core issue that came out earlier is that in building PUBG, Greene and his team frequently collabed with Epic support on what they needed technical support with, so clearly Epic knew they were building a battle royale game. To be fair on Epic's side, their interviews on the success of FBR all state that they only started working on it after the main Fortnite game was out in early access and after seeng PUBG's success, so I doubt they were making their version at the same time they were helping PUBG, but there would be information that could be considered confidential that Epic may have used to get that legs up in the design (in part, having full control of the Unreal engine) that is why PUBG is taking action.
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Yeah the timeline doesn't add up to suggest that Epic heard this unknown indie dev was remaking an ARMA mod and decided then and there they would steal that idea. No one knew this was the next big thing until after PUBG blew up. The best criticism I've heard is that they worked with Epic to make their engine more suitable to BR games, and then Epic turned around and profited on that. But of course there was never any exclusivity arrangement for the improvements Epic made to their own engine, that's preposterous.
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There is the possible situation that Epic, knowing they needed netcode for a 100-person game, did their own work within the Unreal engine group to prep that (it wasn't needed for Fortnite's main mode or for Paragon). I can see if they had that netcode ready, and they had everything else on the engine set from Fortnite, that a two-month dev time from concept to reality made a lot of sense, and that could be what PUBG is looking at, how fast they were able to execute.
It's hard to tell given this is all happening in Korean courts, not the US.
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Standard ones. I can't imagine what an NDA would count for here though?
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If they claim Epic gained an advantage by having access to and eyes on pubg earlier than any other publishers simply because of access through UE development channels I could see them having a chance.
Epic is in a very weird spot being both an engine and game dev. I'm sure their lawyers considered all this before making fortnite but who knows. They certainly did seem to get a very very early/prescient jump on the rest on the industry.
As well could there have been an internal advantage with optimizing for large amounts of players in internal beta builds and using those for fortnite dev while pubg is stuck on an earlier version? Lots of questions to be asked. Like I said, Epic could very easily get stuck in the swamp of conflict of interest. -
I can't imagine how that would happen. Even before the Silicon Knights fiasco Epic rarely would see any licensee's code. Only if someone needed support over something. Epic has no interest in seeing what engine licenses are doing other than to make cool show reels for the engine.
If in some strange alternate universe Bluehole sent epic their code/assets (again, no reason to, Epic is not a publisher) then Epic would have settled this immediately. They have zero incentive to screw licensees. I imagine the only reason they didn't just pay them something to go away is at the same time they have to be fair to everyone and not show that licensees can make unfounded claims and bully Epic around.
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Not sure how you defend this in court. It’s not like it’s patented.
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My brain can't figure out how this can be anything other than a hail mary money grab, because there's a bunch of reasons this makes no sense.
1) wake up and realize that Epic doing a Battle Royale game mode means the core UE4 game will be more optimized. Not like PUBG needs any optimization help....oh wait.
2) there has been strong precedence of allowing similar things unless you can prove art/code was literally stolen. Recreated is fine. And this is AMAZING, because if it wasn't then the big pubs would just sue one another and small indie devs continually trying to claim who owns FPS games.
3) it's not even their concept, and the designs they speak of are just optimal endpoints
Can you imagine if back in the day id and Epic sued one another over various UI aspects of Quake and Unreal? It was great fun having them both compete to make the best game.
They keep coming back to "well they licensed us the engine" part but I don't see how that is not a plus. What they are really upset about is that they (presumably) didn't cut a deal for a flat rate on the engine and are probably stuck with the standard UE4 licensing deal and they just want leverage to get out of that. I have no actual info, just a guess. -
Last grasp of a dying fad. RIP fun times.
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So this is what they are doing instead of fixing the game.
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What is the basis of the suit? Copyright? Contract?
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http://www.businessinsider.com/pubg-bluehole-studios-sues-fortnite-epic-games-copyright-infringement-claims-2018-5
Here is their argument. This is a better summary than what people have been spewing.
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One important thing to note...
When you're trying to protect your mark, you have to do it unilaterally. So there are some legit cases where pubg is being copied almost directly, but in order to enforce that, you need to enforce across the board.
So they may settle amicably with Fortnite in order to continue their suit against other groups infringing.-
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I don't see how someone can claim they own the Battle Royale game mode and yet no one has successfully done the same for TDM, CTF, King of the Hill, zombies, horde mode, etc.
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Hello "potentially richest person on the shack"
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Uh, I already said that. Stop being Fortnite and copying me!
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This is gonna sound gross, but I'd totally sue too.
Say I'm PUBG Corp's council: I know my client is rolling in cash, and something really close in design is rolling in ridiculous cash as well. I'll get paid to collect money for my client, so I'll draft some litigation to see if the courts bite.
It's what rich companies tend to do eventually; throw lawyers at the walls to see if they can bring back some gold.-
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