PUBG Devs File Lawsuit Against Fortnite Devs

<p>The developers behind <em>Player Unknown&&num;8217&semi;s Battlegrounds<&sol;em> has filed a lawsuit against Fornite&&num;8217&semi;s developers&period; The <em>PUBG<&sol;em> developers allege copyright violation on Epic Games&&num;8217&semi; part&period; Epic Games released <em>Fortnite<&sol;em>&&num;8216&semi;s free-to-play Battle Royale mode in September last year after the game&&num;8217&semi;s vanilla PvE &&num;8216&semi;Free The World&&num;8217&semi; mode struggled to gain traction&period; <em>PUBG<&sol;em> publisher Bluehole weighed in on the similarities between the modes in September&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<h2>Bad History<&sol;h2>&NewLine;<p>Bluehole VP and executive producer Chang Han Kim said at the time&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;<em>We&&num;8217&semi;ve had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG’s development as they are the creators of UE4&comma; the engine we licensed for the game&period; After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves&comma; we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known&period;<&sol;em>&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>According to Korea Times&comma; the lawsuit was filed in January&period; However&comma; details are only coming to light now&period; A Bluehole representative has said that there were a number of issues at hand&period; Most notably&comma; Bluehole has to pay royalties to Epic games&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<h2>Royalties<&sol;h2>&NewLine;<p>The representative said&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;<em>We just want to emphasize this is only a problem because Epic Games is the company that makes the engine we use and we pay a large amount of royalties to them&period; And we had this business relationship and we had trust that we would be getting continued support&comma; and we were looking forward to working more closely with them to get technical support&comma; maybe develop new features<&sol;em>&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>However&comma; Epic Games are supposed to have used <em>PUBG<&sol;em>&&num;8216&semi;s name without their knowledge&period; Furthermore&comma; permission wasn&&num;8217&semi;t granted to use the <em>Player Unknown&&num;8217&semi;s Battlegrounds<&sol;em> name&period; Because of that&comma; the developers were surprised to see the name used&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Not much else is known about the case&period; However&comma; we&&num;8217&semi;ll keep you updated when we can&period; So far&comma; a date for the case hasn&&num;8217&semi;t been set&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><strong>Source&colon; <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;koreatimes&period;co&period;kr&sol;www&sol;tech&sol;2018&sol;05&sol;134&lowbar;249598&period;html">Korea Times<&sol;a>&period;<&sol;strong><&sol;p>&NewLine;