Things have been tough forBlizzardrecently. The company’s banning of a pro-Hong KongHearthstoneplayer has led to much criticism and has made them the butt of many jokes in the gaming community, and then there’s theplummeting Blizzard game salesfor the company overall. On top of all that, the company also had to deal with a Chinese game company copying and stealing elements fromOverwatch.
Fortunately forActivision Blizzardand its Chinese partner NetEase, they won the copyright lawsuit. The Pudong New Area People’s Court ruled that the Chinese game developer 4399 Network was guilty of copyright infringement for taking elements from the popular first-person hero shooter and adding them to two of their games, those being the mobile gameClash of Fightersand an online game calledGunplay Battlefront.
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These two games have been accused of stealing quite a bit fromOverwatch, from its general gameplay to the character designs and even the playable maps. 4399 Network argued that Blizzard didn’t own the elements it claimed to have rights to, and in fact claimed that Blizzard had stolen these aspects that were present in previous games. 4399 Network also claimed that despite the similarities toOverwatch, their games were all original developments. Because of these reasons, the Chinese company believed that they could not be accused of copyright infringement.
Blizzard hasn’t been found guilty of stealing elements from any other game when makingOverwatch, though, so the Chinese court threw out that claim and ruled in favor of Blizzard. As a result, Blizzard and NetEase have been awarded 4 million Yuan, which is roughly equivalent to $569,000 USD. When broken down, that’s 3 million Yuan for theOverwatchelements used inClash of Fightersand 500,000 Yuan forGunplay Battlefront. The reason why they received so much less for the online game is because it has been unavailable since the summer of 2017. 4399 Network must also pay for Blizzard and NetEase’s legal fees, which equates to about 470,000 Yuan.
These aren’t the only Chinese knock-offs Blizzard has had to deal with. About two weeks ago,Blizzard had already won a lawsuit against 4399 Networkover another one of theirOverwatchclones calledHeroes of Warfare. And back in August, Blizzard sued Chinese company Sina Games for intellectual property infringement, calling their gameGlorious Sagaa “blatantWarcraftknock-off”.
Overall, Blizzard must be glad to get this whole copyright mess cleaned up before the release ofOverwatch 2, which was announced at BlizzCon 2019 earlier this month. The sequel seems to work more like an expansion, though, as originalOverwatchplayers will get all the same maps thatOverwatch 2will have, and progression and cosmetics will carry over to the next game.Overwatch 2director Jeff Kaplan also teased that thelong-awaited story mode will be a decently long experience.
