Krafton sues Apple, Google and Garena over clones

Pubg-maker Krafton filed a big lawsuit in the Central District Court of California on January 10, 2022. It is suing the developer of two mobile games that it accuses of copying PUBG: Battlegrounds. The PUBG game developer alleges that Garena Online’s Free Fire and Free Fire Max games copy several copyrighted aspects of PUBG: Battlegrounds, including its game structure, in-game items, equipment, and locations. Krafton even accuses Google of hosting Youtube videos with gameplay of the two games in question, as well as numerous posts containing a feature-length Chinese film that is nothing more than a blatantly infringing live-action dramatization of Battlegrounds. Krafton alleges that Garena has earned hundreds of millions of dollars from sales from its games and Google and Apple have similarly earned a substantial amount of revenue from their distribution of Free Fire. Krafton requests the court to block the distribution and sales of the Free Fire games, the infringing videos, in addition to requesting damages that include the companies’ profits from Free Fire sales.