It’s pretty well-known throughout the world that China is the home of the ‘rip-off’ product. This is largely due to some creative laws in the country that believe that ‘copying’ is the highest form of praise to the original creator. It seems, however, that in one of the most recent instances Blizzard would disagree.
In a report via Kotaku, Blizzard has launched legal action against a Chinese developer over what it feels is a blatant rip-off of World of Warcraft.
Blizzard Sues Chinese Developer over WoW Clone
There are, of course, plenty of games out there that are ‘heavily inspired’ by Blizzards World of Warcraft. ‘Glorious Saga’, developed by Sina Games, however, has clearly taken this a bit too far.
As you can see in the video below, character models are pretty much directly copied from the game and this even includes weapon/item names and even outright calling copying names!
Blizzard has said:
“Every monster, creature, animal, and vehicle in the Infringing Game was copied from the Warcraft games.
Weapons, amulets, and other objects were taken straight from the Warcraft games, without pretense. Audio cues and sound effects from the Warcraftgames were reproduced for the Infringing Game.”
Will They Win?
With Blizzard claiming $150,000 for each infringement, they’re clearly after a lot of money from this developer. Probably enough to shut them down for making such a blatant clone. Will they win, though? Well, despite the rather unusual copyright laws within China, Sina Games does have a parent company registered in America. As such, this seems more likely to succeed than not.
Blizzard real aim here is likely not to get money (although I’m sure they could use it) so much as to shut the game down and send a message to other would-be clone developers out there. Put simply, ‘you touch our IP, and we’re going to sue you!’.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
