Last month, we revealed this bad news about the long-awaited MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) of Riot Gamesbased in the universe of League of Legends. And while the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) from Riot is still as popular as ever, the competition continues to intensify, especially since the game has been available on different platforms.
the ransom of glory
We know that the success of certain video games makes people envious, and we have already seen in the past that unscrupulous publishers no longer hesitate to openly imitate these successful gamesas evidenced by this recent Chinese counterfeit of the game Elden Ringwhich had caused controversy a few weeks after the release of the game from From Software.
And this time, Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends, is again suing a mobile game developer, Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. (owned by ByteDance Ltd.), this time alleging that the Chinese studio copied League of Legends: Wild Rift, the Android and iOS adaptation of Riot’s globally popular MOBA.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in a California court, the same court where Riot sued the same Chinese studio in 2018. In the previous case, Riot sued Moonton over his game Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA. At the time, the federal judge had refused to hear this case, judging that China was a better jurisdiction to take the complaint. Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd., parent company of Riot Gamesthen intervened and won the case against Moonton, winning $2.9 million.
And the latest complaint is about the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bangwhich is none other than the new name of Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA, and which has been downloaded more than 500 million times on Android. Riot’s complaint begins as if the court already knew Moonton, saying that the American company “wants to prevent Moonton from continuing its deliberate and sustained campaign to appropriate Riot’s highly prized rights to the League of Legends: Wild Rift mobile video game and related content”.
Riot’s lawsuit also notes that after filing a complaint with Google and Mobile Legends has been removed from the Play Store, Moonton surreptitiously launched Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, “a slightly modified version of Mobile Legends”, according to the complaint. Since then, “Moonton updated Mobile Legends: Bang Bang to copy many expressive elements from Wild Rift, continuing its cycle of consciously appropriating Riot’s intellectual property”.
Riot’s latest lawsuit resembles a lawsuit the Tencent subsidiary filed last January against a Vietnamese developer.alleging that the studio blatantly copied the game Teamfight TacticsI’auto-battler from Riot also taking place in the League of Legends universe and which was released in 2020 on Android and iOS.
Given that Riot is suing an offshore company, and given the outcome of its previous lawsuit against Moonton, the company may have filed this lawsuit as a procedural step to prosecute Moonton again in China. Either way, Riot’s complaint seems largely documented by comparisons of marketing materials, character designs, and even community feedback mentioning the similarities between Moonton’s work and Riot’s.
And to learn more about upcoming games from Riot Games, check out the gameplay of the next fighting game entitled Project Ljust here.
