The Chinese Giant NetEaseone of the largest video game studios in the worldis accused by Riot of plagiarism reveals Polygon. Although his name is not well known, his productions are numerous, particularly in the world of online and mobile titles, with for example the exploitation of FortCraft, Marvel Super War, The Lord of the Rings Rise to War, or the participation in the development of Total War Arena and Diablo Immortal (with Blizzard).
Capitalized at 40 billion euros, NetEase is accused of plagiarizing the game VALORANT from Riot Games, one of its main competitors in China (Riot is owned by Tencent, the world leader). On the highly competitive multiplayer FPS market, alongside Apex Legends or Overwatch 2, we obviously find VALORANT but also Hyper Front. A “clone” released in 2022 according to the LoL publisher, where players compete in 5v5 on smartphones for free.
If it is not so obvious to see plagiarism, Riot believes that the similarities are much more numerous: same gaming experience, same graphics, and a similar feeling of gameplay. Riot’s lawyer, Dave Nabel, announced to sue the publisher on several markets in parallel, in order to assert the rights of the company:
We don’t believe that changing the color of a character skill or slightly altering the visual appearance changes the fact that this is an obvious copyright infringement. It’s like the old saying, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
Riot now hopes stop the operation of this game and earn some money on the way through the trial.