Riot Games hits NetEase with lawsuit over Valorant ‘copy’

Riot Games is suing publisher NetEase over the Chinese company’s Hyper FrontRiot claims that a mobile five-on-5 shooter, called ‘Alias’ by Riot is an a Valorant clone. It’s also bringing the case to courts in the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and Singapore, Riot Games lawyer Dan Nabel told Polygon. The lawsuits vary slightly in each country, based on their respective copyright laws, but the thrust of the issue is the same — that Hyper Front is a “copy of substantial parts of Valorant,” as Riot’s lawyers claim in their U.K. filing.

Hyper FrontLike ValorantFree-to-play First-person Shooter. Teams of five can play in several modes. Riot Games was released Valorant in 2020 on Windows PC, and it’s currently working on a mobile version, announced in 2021. In 2020, it will be available on Windows PC. ValorantOn average, more than 14,000,000 players per month.

Hyper Frontwas made available on iOS and Android for 2022. Player data for Hyper Front is not available, though it’s listed on the Google Play Store as having more than 1 million downloads and more than 48,000 reviews. It’s not currently available to play in the U.S., where Riot Games is headquartered. Riot lays out a number of similarities between the two games in its U.K. lawsuit — characters, maps, weapons, weapon skins, and charms, even going as far as comparing weapon stats. According to the studio, NetEase modified its games. Hyper Front slightly after Riot’s first complaints, as demonstrated in the images below. Riot insists that copyright infringement is more than just this.

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  Image by Riot Games and NetEase
  

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  Image by Riot Games and NetEase
  

“All of our creative choices are mirrored in NetEase’s game,” Nabel told Polygon. “We don’t think that changing the color of a character ability or slightly modifying the visual appearance changes the fact that it’s copyright infringement. It’s like that old saying, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.’”

NetEase has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

Nabel has compared it to the Hyper Front lawsuit to another case between NetEase and PUBG Corp. over NetEase’s Knives are OutAnd Rules of SurvivalPUBG Corp. alleged that these were infringing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. This case, which was brought in U.S. Court in 2018, was resolved in 2019. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

Riot Games wants NetEase forced to close down by the courts Hyper Front, and for “substantial” damages — Riot didn’t specify a figure. Nabel told Polygon that the company is litigating the issue in multiple courts because “copyright is territorial,” with different laws in different areas of the world. “We don’t want to rely on one particular market to have this issue resolved,” Nabel said. “NetEase is a global publisher, as are we. We want them to know that we take the matter very seriously.”

Riot Games has certainly proved that in the past, as it’s filed a number of lawsuits against companies making copies of its games. Riot was sued earlier in the year for a League of Legends “ripoff” and a Tactical Teamfighting “knockoff.” In 2018, Riot, through parent company Tencent Holdings, won a $2.9 million lawsuit over a different League of Legends lookalike.