The creator of the world’s top-selling video game has sued a Chinese company for allegedly ripping off content, from military-style air drops to the iconic frying pan and chicken dinner victory slogan the survival shooter’s become known for.
PUBG Corp, an affiliate of South Korean studio Bluehole Inc, accused Netease Inc (網易科技), China’s second-largest video game publisher, of basing two mobile games — Rules of Survival and Knives Out — on the ideas behind Brendan Greene’s PC smash hit PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
PUBG wants both games removed from Apple Inc’s App Store and Alphabet Inc’s Google Play, and is demanding US$150,000 “per infringed work,” according to a court filing.
Netease-rival Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) is Bluehole’s distribution partner in China.
The game features 100 players racing to kill each other until there is one survivor: a so-called Battle Royale concept that has taken the gaming industry by storm since PlayerUnknown’s Ballegrounds’ release a year ago, but the studio says Netease went too far, detailing a plethora of alleged copyright infringements in a 154-page filing with a US district court.
Rules of Survival victors are feted by an enthusiastic chicken, which PUBG claims evokes the “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” message that greets sole survivors in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
In both Knives Out and Battlegrounds an air-dropped supply box spews red smoke.
A frying pan, both weapon and butt-armor in Battlegrounds, operates similarly in Rules of Survival, PUBG said, calling the cooking utensil a “beloved” emblem.
Netease “intended to create consumer confusion” that its mobile games were created by PUBG, according to the filing.
Rules of Survival and Knives Out both have their own independent intellectual property, said Sharon Hu, a spokeswoman for Netease, adding that the company would publish a more detailed response soon.
Bluehole has sold more than 32 million copies of its game, earning more than 250 billion won (US$235 million) last year in operating profit.
Netease’s Rules of Survival, released late last year, is in the top 100 in about 60 nations, while Knives Out was the fourth-highest grossing game in Japan as of yesterday.
As smartphones and tablets have gotten more sophisticated and powerful, they have become more satisfying for gamers.
Global mobile gaming revenue was US$42 billion in 2016, 39 percent of the overall video game market, according to research by German investment bank Berenberg.
By 2020, that is projected to be 50 percent, or US$65 billion.
Last month, Amazon.com Inc rolled out its GameOn service, a competitor to Skillz that helps mobile and PC developers promote their games by creating e-sports tournaments.
In the past two weeks, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, two of the world’s top-grossing computer games, launched on mobile.
They are the top two free games on Apple’s App Store.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained