Krafton sues Garena, Apple, and Google over Free Fire copyright infringement
The company that made Pubg developer Krafton has filed a Lawsuit against Garena Free Fire, for making a fake version of their famous battle royale game.
In the case, Krafton says that the game Free Fire and its later version, Free Fire Max, use PUBG’s copyrighted items, guns, and game map without permission. One of the lawsuit’s claims is that the in-game maps of Free Fire and PUBG are very similar.
For example, both games have a river and both have a town on the coast. Krafton says that starting on April 13, 2019, Garena broke their intellectual property rights on purpose and with knowledge.
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Krafton also says that Apple and Google have turned down requests to take Free Fire off of their app shops. Because of this, both businesses are named in the case as defendants.
The lawsuit says that during the first three months of 2021, Garena made $100 million from Free Fire through in-app sales and subscriptions. Krafton thinks that this money was taken illegally. App Annie data shows that Free Fire was the most played battle royale game in 2021, beating out PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile. But PUBG Mobile still has the most players of all the mobile battle royale games.
Krafton has also named YouTube as a suspect because it hosts Free Fire gaming videos. This is in addition to Garena, Apple, and Google. They have also talked about a Chinese movie that they say is a copy of their game. They call it a “live-action dramatization of Battlegrounds” that steals their ideas.
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History repeats
The company that made PUBG, PUBG Corp, has sued other makers of battle royale games in the past. In 2018, they sued Netease over Knives Out and Rules of Survival, saying that they were copies of PUBG and asking that they be taken down.
They also sued Epic Games, the company that made Fortnite. They said that Fortnite’s battle royale mode was unfair because PUBG was made with Epic’s Unreal Engine 4. But neither Knives Out nor Rules of Survival were taken off app stores, and both the App Store and Google Play still don’t have Fortnite because of different legal issues. Late in December 2021, Krafton asked Garena to stop selling Free Fire and Free Fire Max by taking away their permission from Apple and Google. They gave Garena until January 5, 2022, to stop selling the apps.
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In the current case, Krafton wants to stop sales of Free Fire and Free Fire Max on the App Store and Google Play. For each copyright violation, Krafton wants up to $150,000. Hackers who spread tricks and hacks for PUBG Mobile recently lost a court case and had to pay $10 million to Krafton and Tencent. The companies plan to use the money to make tools that make it harder to cheat.
