According to Bloomberg, game website Polygon and other media recently reported that Tencent's 100% controlled fist company is suing ByteDance's Mu Hitomi Technology in the Central District Federal Court in California on the grounds that the other party is suspected of "plagiarism".
Screenshot from the game site Polygon
According to reports, in a document submitted to the court on May 9, local time, Riot Company said that mobile multiplayer online tactical competitive (MOBA) game "Mobile Legends: Bang Bang" developed by Mu Hitomi Technology constituted plagiarism on the game content and promotional materials of Fist Company's League of Legends: Wild Rift, which had infringed copyright.
"League of Legends Mobile Game" belongs to the "League of Legends" series, opened for public beta by Fist Company in October 2020, and has been downloaded more than 10 million times in the Google App Store; "Endless Showdown" was first released by Mu Hitomi Technology in July 2016, and has been downloaded more than 500 million times in the Google App Store.
The game screen of the "League of Legends Mobile Game" displayed at the product launch (Source: Bloomberg)
"Endless Showdown" game screen (Source: Google App Store)
For the lawsuit, Riot Company issued a statement by email. In the statement, Riot Company said: "This action aims to stop Mu Hitomi Technology from continuing to deliberately achieve unearned gains through Fist Company's valuable "League of Legends Mobile Game" and related content. Fist Company stressed: "Plagiarism must stop." ”
In the litigation documents, Riot Company listed a large number of similarities between "Endless Showdown" and "League of Legends Mobile Game" in terms of marketing materials and character design, and also extracted some player reviews, hoping to confirm that "Endless Showdown" indeed constitutes a plagiarism of "League of Legends Mobile Game".
Comparison of some of the character designs shown in the Fist Company document (Source: Polygon)
People who pay attention to the dynamics of the game industry may be familiar with this scene, because this is not the first time that fist companies have sued Mu Hitomi Technology. In 2018, fist company sued Mu Hitomi Technology for almost the same reasons, and even the court was the same. At the time, Riot said Infinity Showdown was a "naked plagiarism" of its computer-side game League of Legends.
The federal court judge, who found the case more appropriate to be accepted by the Chinese court, refused to hear the case. Later, in July 2018, Tencent, the parent company of Fist, filed a lawsuit against Xu Zhenhua, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Mu Hitomi Technology and former employee of Tencent, before the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Tencent said that the "Endless Showdown" developed by Mu Hitomi Technology constituted plagiarism to "League of Legends", and Xu Zhenhua himself violated the "Confidentiality and Non-Competition Commitment Agreement" signed with Tencent.
According to reports, Xu Zhenhua was sentenced to compensate Tencent for violating the non-compete agreement by 19.4 million yuan, but the normal operation of "Endless Showdown" was not affected.
According to the official website of Mu Hitomi Technology, its CEO Xu Zhenhua once worked for Tencent
Earlier, in 2016, at the beginning of the release of "Endless Showdown" (then known as "Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA"), Riot Company had questioned whether Mu Hitomi Technology had plagiarism and asked Google to remove it from the App Store.
Mu Hitomi Technology's move in this regard is to take down the game before Google takes down the game, modify it and rename it "Mobile Legends: Bang Bang", and then re-launch it in November 2016.
Earlier this year, rioted against Imba Network, a Vietnamese game developer, for plagiarizing Teamfight Tactics, a mobile spin-off of League of Legends.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.