PUBG Mobile is one of the best-selling mobile games of 2021. This game ranks sixth in the last year’s ranking. Its creator, Crafton, intends to preserve this place if it does not advance in the world rankings. As a result, it’s taking a bleak view of rival Garena Online, whose Free Fire games clearly overshadowed PUBG Mobile last year, thanks to its viral side.
Even worse, according to Crafton, Garena would have copied several aspects of his main game to make his own. A situation that consequently led to the South Korean company suing Garena Online and major app stores.
Garena sued for plagiarism, Apple and Google for collusion
In the lawsuit, Crafton referred to several Free Fire games as copies of their PUBG Mobile game. A situation that may date back to 2017 after the release of Free Fire: Battlegrounds. At that time, complaints were lodged and an amicable settlement was discussed between the two parties.
However, no licensing agreement has been reached between Crafton and Garena. This did not stop the PUBG Mobile competitor from releasing a new game called Free Fire MAX in September 2021. A game that offers the same features as Free Fire. Which means impersonating aspects of PUBG Mobile.
Crafton also stated in its complaint that the offending game would have made hundreds of millions of dollars for its creators. An unexpected financial gain that could have benefited Apple and Google thanks to the commissions they received on sales through the App Store and Google Store.
Crafton also cited YouTube in his complaint. The company blames the video-on-demand platform for hosting several videos related to Free Fire and Free Fire MAX games. The videos which naturally achieved hundreds of millions of views and boosted the popularity of the game.
Crafton fears falling victim to app clones again
Before seeking the intervention of legal authorities, Crafton contacted Apple and Google on December 21, 2021 to resolve the issue. However, both companies responded unfavorably to the request to remove the game from their app stores. Same story on YouTube, which refused to remove videos related to Garena games from its platform.
By embarking on this legal adventure, Crafton hopes to protect his new game called PUBG: New State. The latter contains new items that can be taken over again by Garena or other unscrupulous developers.
On the other hand, it should be noted that app cloning is a real problem for app stores. For example, just this week Apple had to remove several pirated versions of the popular game Wordle from its store.
The gesture comes at a time when the Cupertino company is facing a lawsuit brought by a developer who considers itself harmed by clones of its app.
source : Take Crunch
