PUBG producer Krafton has filed a lawsuit destined to make history: it sues the developer of two mobile video games that it accuses of being copies of PUBG: Battlegrounds, the successful battle royale shooter for PC. As if that were not enough, he also sued Apple and Google for distributing the games in their app stores.
Furthermore, in the documents Krafton accuses Google host YouTube videos containing the gameplay of the two games in question, as well as “numerous publications containing a Chinese feature film that is none other than one Battlegrounds live action dramatization in clear violation of our copyright.”
The games in Krafton’s sights are called Free Fire and Free Fire Max, offered by the developer Garena. Both in the App Store and in google play, are displayed as Garena Free Fire and Garena Free Fire Max. Both are available for free with in-app purchases.
Secondo Krafton “Free Fire and Free Fire Max extensively copy numerous aspects of Battlegrounds including the unique feature “Air drop” for the opening of the game protected by copyright, structure, gameplay, combination and selection of weapons, armor, unique items and the general election of color combinations, materials and textures. Krafton claims that Garena won”hundreds of millions of dollars“On in-app sales and what Apple and Google have”equally won a significant amount of revenue from their Free Fire distribution.”
Krafton claims that on December 21, he took several legal actions: he asked Garena to “immediately stop its exploitation of Free Fire and Free Fire Max”, which Garena would have refused; asked Apple and Google to stop distributing the games, both still available in both app stores; and asked YouTube to delete videos with the game of Free Fire and Free Fire Max “which include elements that blatantly violate the battlefields and, separately, of remove the unauthorized feature film“, Which YouTube did not do.
free fire won $1.1 billion thanks to player spending in 2021, according to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, an amount that is increased 48% compared to 2020. While the total dollar amount is slightly less than the $2.9 billion PUBG Mobile made last year, PUBG Mobile figures only increased by 7% annually, Sensor Tower reports. This could suggest that the growth of PUBG Mobile it is slowing down just like Free Fire is speeding up.
PUBG Mobile, PUBG Mobile Lite, and the China and India specific versions of PUBG Mobile earned a total of 639 million in revenue last year, according to Appfigures, while Free Fire earned 414 million. Jason Golz, a spokesman for Garena Sea’s parent company, told The Verge that “Krafton’s claims are baseless.”.
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