After nearly 200 days of "plagiarism" controversy, netease's "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening" mobile game finally received a public apology from the initiator, admitting to fabricating a large amount of false information in zhihu's relevant answers.
On September 11, 2021, the third day of the launch of the NetEase mobile game "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening", some netizens accused NetEase of using the game design plan he submitted when he was applying for a job without his permission in the Harry Potter mobile game without his permission, and posted his own design ideas and planning document details. As the popularity of the Harry Potter mobile game climbed, the incident quickly fermented, and countless players "spoke up" for the netizens, which brought a serious negative impact on the reputation of the game itself and the company.
But there are also many players who, after thinking about it, have doubted the authenticity of this matter. According to the comparison of the content provided by the user, most of them explain their own game plans, which is paradoxical and lacks intuitive details. The so-called "original gameplay" has also been pointed out by other netizens to have similarities with existing games on the market.
For example, the linear map advancement method and the combat method of summoning the entourage to the map are very similar to a certain game, and the game has been online as early as 2016, far earlier than the user claimed to be the time of game design.
Many game industry planners have also expressed their views on this matter, pointing out that this is not a complete plan and lacks enough details to be implemented. A game starts with a simple idea and is market-oriented, which requires rigorous logic and countless details to fill in, which can extend to a very different game.
In fact, the reason why Harry Potter mobile games can occupy a place in the mobile game market with a hundred flowers is precisely because it has added many novel details to the traditional theme of card strategy, and the creativity is constructed with strict logic and well transformed into a realistic and feasible gameplay. Comparing a plan with only a simple design idea to a complete game and copying it with a "real hammer" game is an arbitrary and meaningless thing.
After seven months, the plagiarism storm of the Harry Potter mobile game has finally settled. The netizen issued an apology statement, admitting that he was because the game was hot at that time, so he had the idea of creating a controversial topic and attracting attention.
Although the initiators have already suffered the consequences of their own evil, what should arouse our thinking and attention is that in today's Internet age, why is the cost of creating false information so low? Making up a story, accompanied by a few ambiguous pictures, can easily trigger a hot "Internet public opinion war".
Harry Potter mobile games, as a product of the game giant NetEase, will still be negatively affected for up to seven months, and how can other more vulnerable ordinary people bear the pain of "debunking rumors and running broken legs"?
Because of a network of false content, the company has been infringed on its reputation, the rumor-mongers have to face legal sanctions, and the netizens who follow the trend have paid time and feelings, so the situation of "three defeats and injuries" is presumably not what everyone wants to see.
At the press conference of the "Qinglang" series of special actions on March 17, 2022, the relevant departments proposed four measures, "cleaning up the stock, curbing the increment, punishing the source, and coordinating governance" to severely crack down on online rumors. The state still attaches so much importance to it, and we should respond positively, keep sober and keep ourselves in this network era of information torrents.