Fortnite has been a massive hit for publisher Epic, as the free-to-play title has taken over Twitch (with a little help from Drake and Thanos) and become insanely popular. And the publishers of the other big battle royale video game, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG, have been less than happy about it, making noises that they think they got ripped off. Now, they’ve formalized their copyright complaints, and the two are officially heading to court.
The Korea Times is reporting that Korean publisher PUBG is taking Epic Games Korea to court over the dispute. The argument is that Fortnite substantially copied both user interfaces and items in its battle royale mode from PUBG, and the publisher is seeking an injuction against the game being released in Korea. It’s not clear, yet, whether they’ll decide to take the suit to other jurisdictions, although a success in Korea for PUBG might be bad news for Epic either way.
Still, this is unlikely, at least at the moment, to derail Fortnite in any meaningful sense, and as Apple can tell you, ‘look and feel’ lawsuits have a spotty track record in the many courts of the world. For most of the world, at least, the argument will have to remain on Twitch chats and Steam forums. But it’s unlikely to stay there forever.
(via The Verge)