Blizzard Sues Chinese Company Over Blatant Warcraft Clone

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Blizzard Sues Chinese Company Over Blatant Warcraft Clone

Earlier this month, Blizzard Entertainment filed a lawsuit against Chinese company Sina Games in response to a free mobile game they developed. via:mmosquare.com Earlier this month, against Chinese company Sina Games in response to a free mobile game they developed. Called Glorious Saga, the game included elements that very, very closely resemble parts of Blizzard's Warcraft series. The lawsuit amounts to a hefty sum, asking for $150,000 per each individual case of infringed work, in addition to compensation for legal and other fees related to the case. Blizzard alleges that every single monster, creature, animal and vehicle as well as many items and sounds were copied from Warcraft. While the breadth of the infringement will need to be decided in court, the repurposing of Blizzard's designs and ideas will be immediately apparent to anyone with some familiarity with the Warcraft series after watching footage the game being played. THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY Also according to Blizzard, many of Sina Games' other projects take heavily from different existing properties, including Yu-Gi-Oh! and Naruto. Without a Chinese internet connection, this is hard to confirm, as Sina Games is a subsidiary of the much larger Sina Corporation. Sina's gaming appears to include mostly general gaming news. However, a now-defunct English-language does showcase a Flappy Bird clone called Rolling Bird, from back when those made up just about the entirety of apps on the App Store. The clone includes as obstacles that appear to be Bullet Bills, as well as a collectible Captain America shield. This is just one case that's part of a larger, ongoing issue in the Chinese video game world. As China's economy grows, so, naturally, does its video game industry. Many fans would prefer that Chinese games succeed on their own merits rather than by taking advantage of China's oftentimes lax enforcement of Intellectual Property laws. Earlier this year, a man to protest another game that relied heavily on other developers' ideas—which is to say, this isn't a battle solely being fought by Blizzard. Following the widespread publication of the lawsuit, the English-language Facebook page for Glorious Saga has announced the , its servers already shut down entirely. While this doesn't quite amount to an admission of fault, it's hard to imagine Blizzard not having a case in court moving forward.