{"id":22220,"date":"2018-05-29T18:57:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T18:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/319017"},"modified":"2018-05-29T18:57:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T18:57:00","slug":"pubg-corp-files-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-against-fortnite-dev-epic-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/05\/29\/pubg-corp-files-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-against-fortnite-dev-epic-games\/","title":{"rendered":"PUBG Corp. files copyright infringement lawsuit against Fortnite dev Epic Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PUBG Corp. has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, alleging that Epic\u2019s <em>Fornite Battle Royale<\/em> is far too similar to its own battle royale title <em>PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds<\/em> and, as a result, infringes on PUBG Corp.&#8217;s copyrights.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.koreatimes.co.kr\/www\/tech\/2018\/05\/134_249598.html\">The Korea Times<\/a> reports that Bluehole subsidiary PUBG Corp. filed the lawsuit to the Seoul Central District Court back in January, explaining now to the publication that the move was in an effort to protect its own copyright.<\/p>\n<p>This lawsuit is particularly interesting, and messy, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Epic and PUBG Corp. have an interesting\u00a0relationship to begin with. Together, the company&#8217;s battle royale titles dominate the genre, both games are built with Epic&#8217;s Unreal Engine, and both studios are owned at least partially by Tencent.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <em>PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds<\/em>\u00a0ushered in the big battle royale craze to begin with when it launched into Early Access in March 2017. The record-breaking success of the\u00a0game was quickly followed by a sizable surge of other last-man-standing games, including a new, free-to-play battle royale mode in Epic\u2019s existing\u00a0title\u00a0<em>Fortnite<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Bluehole\u2019s vice president Chang Hang Kim called out\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/306323\/Bluehole_hits_out_at_Epic_for_replicating_Battlegrounds_in_Fortnite.php\">Epic in a press release<\/a> shortly after <em>Fortnite\u00a0Battle Royale<\/em>\u00a0was announced, accusing the\u00a0game of \u201creplicating the experience for which <em>Battlegrounds<\/em> is known\u201d and expressing displeasure that Epic publicly cited <em>PlayerUnknown&#8217;s Battlegrounds<\/em> as a major inspiration for its battle royale mode.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Bluehole said it was contemplating further action, and the January lawsuit seems to be the continuation of that earlier threat.<\/p>\n<p>This also marks the second major lawsuit the company has filed against alleged copycats. PUBG Corp., Bluehole\u2019s subsidiary for <em>PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds b<\/em>usiness, also recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/316184\/PUBG_Corp_takes_NetEase_to_court_over_alleged_mobile_PUBG_copycats.php\">filed a lawsuit against NetEase<\/a>, alleging that a pair of the company\u2019s mobile battle royale games, <em>Knives Out<\/em> and <em>Rules of Survival<\/em>, contain \u201csimilar visual and audio elements\u201d to <em>PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PUBG Corp. has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, alleging that Epic\u2019s Fornite Battle Royale is far too similar to its own battle royale title PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds and, as a result, infringes on PUBG Corp.&#8217;s copyrights. The Korea Times reports that Bluehole subsidiary PUBG Corp. filed the lawsuit to the Seoul Central District Court back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}