PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds commonly referred to as PUBG is currently one of the most successful PC game garnering millions of players. Following this success PUBG's developers recently released a mobile version of the game available for download on app-stores. Earning millions of dollars in revenue, game copying experts did not waste time and had their eye on this gold mine of a game. Last April 2, 2018, PUBG's developer PUBG Corp. a company owned by Korean publisher Bluehole finally filed a lawsuit in the US District Court of Northern California against Chinese publisher NetEase. The lawsuit is directed specifically towards the mobile games Rules of Survival and Knives Out. The two games extremely resembles the game PUBG. Before it came to this, last January 24, 2018, PUBG Corp originally made a complaint to Apple against NetEase but NetEase responded last January 31, 2018 denying any copyright infringement. This response prompted PUBG Corp. to respond with a lawsuit that may upset many Knives Out and Rules of Survival players who have already invested money in the game.
The lawsuit is supported by the 155 page document recently revealed by torrentfreak. The document discussed and pointed out the aspects of PUBG that was allegedly copied by NetEase into Knives Out and Rules of Survival. The document also contains a presentation of copyrightable audiovisual subject matters in PUBG, all of which are original works of expression that provides interactive audiovisual entertainment to PUBG players. Pre-Game Lobby and Waiting Area,
Air-Jump,
Play Map,
Character Attributes,
Equipment Acquisition,
Weapons Modification and Ammunition,
Armor,
Clothing,
Equipment,
Configuration,
Consumables,
The "Frying Pan",
Vehicles,
Weapon,
Equipment and Vehicle Spawning,
Game Areas and Buildings,
"Winner Winner Chicken Dinner",
"Down But Not Out",
Bombardment Zone,
Shrinking Gameplay,
Air Drop,
Sound and Noise and Movement are the copyrightable audiovisual subject matters that PUBG Corp. enumerated. The document insisted that the overall gameplay, look and feel of Rules of Survival and Knives Out very closely matches the PUBG. The narrative arc of the game, audio, visual representations of movement, shooting, healing, boosting and battle formats all corresponds to those of PUBG.
