Krafton accused the authors of Free Fire of plagiarizing PUBG. The company also sued Apple and Google

Korean Krafton demanded to remove Free Fire from mobile stores. She is unhappy with the excessive similarity of this battle royale and her PUBG game. The company has already filed a lawsuit, in which it also mentioned Apple and Google, for not preventing the distribution of the “fake”.

The PUBG developer claims that Free Fire intentionally copied many aspects of his game. Including structure, in-game items, equipment, and locations. For example, the lawsuit mentions that Garena added a river and a second large island to the Free Fire map to look more like a Korean title.

Examples of borrowings mentioned in the lawsuit
As Krafton noted in her complaint, Free Fire was released in 2017 shortly after the PC version of PUBG appeared.

To date, the game from Garena has managed to collect over a billion downloads in Google Play alone. It is not known what her revenue is, but the lawsuit says that in the first quarter of 2021, Free Fire earned $ 100 million in the United States. According to Krafton, this money was “obtained dishonestly” and was the result of “illegal sales”.

Krafton has already tried to prevent Garena from earning on Free Fire. The company appealed to Apple and Google (as well as to Garena herself) with a request to remove the controversial title from the stores, but she was refused. Now she wants to get the removal through the court. Krafton also expects that it will be reimbursed for losses, including compensation for profits from sales in Free Fire. According to the lawsuit, each copyright infringement can cost $150 thousand.

By the way, YouTube also appears in the lawsuit. The Korean company was not satisfied that the service allows you to post videos with Free Fire gameplay that violates Krafton copyrights. In addition, there is a movie Biubiubiu (硬汉枪神) on the platform, the plot of which is built around a game in the battle royale genre. According to Krafton, this game is also too similar to PUBG.

So far, neither side has commented on the lawsuit.

This is not the first time Krafton is suing over PUBG. In 2018, she was accused of plagiarizing Fortnite from Epic Games, as well as Rules of Survival and Knives Out from NetEase. The last two titles are still present in the stores. Fortnite is not there, but the reason for this was not a lawsuit by Krafton, but a court between Epic Games and Apple.