PUBG Corp has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games for copyright violation, according to a Korea Times report. The Korea-based PUBG Corp filed the injunction against Epic Games Korea in January, alleging copyright infringement. The Seoul Central District Court will decide whether Fortnite copied PUBG, though no further details concerning the claims have been revealed.
Epic Games released Fortnite's free-to-play Battle Royale mode in September last year, after the game's vanilla PvE 'Free The World' mode struggled to gain traction. PUBG publisher Bluehole weighed in on the similarities between the modes in September.
"We've had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG’s development as they are the creators of UE4, the engine we licensed for the game," Bluehole VP and executive producer Chang Han Kim said. "After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known."
In September last year, a Bluehole representative clarified with us that it wasn't Fortnite's inheritance of the Battle Royale mode that was concerning.
"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. And we had this business relationship and we had trust that we would be getting continued support, and we were looking forward to working more closely with them to get technical support, maybe develop new features.
"But our name was used to officially promote their game without our knowledge. There was no discussion. It was just a bit surprising and disappointing to see our business partner using our name officially to promote the game mode that is pretty similar to us and there was misunderstanding in the community that we're officially involved in the project."
It's unclear when court proceedings will commence, but we'll keep you updated.
