Blizzard sues Chinese maker of Warcraft-like mobile game
Blizzard Entertainment has filed a lawsuit in California against Sina Games. That Chinese studio is the creator of free-to-play smartphone game Glorious Saga. According to Blizzard, the company copies many elements from its Warcraft games.
Game website Polygon has put the indictment online. Blizzard writes in it that the free game from the Chinese company is almost a complete copy of Warcraft games and related products. Blizzard wants to force through the courts that the game is no longer available in this form and the company is also demanding compensation of USD 150,000 per work that is violated.
The smartphone game in question is known in China as Glorious Saga, but is also available worldwide. The app is called Glorious World in the Google Play Store. That version seems to be little used, because according to the download store there are only about a thousand installations. It is not known how many users the Chinese version has.
According to Blizzard, “every monster, creature, animal and vehicle” in the game has been copied from Warcraft games. Weapons, amulets and other objects would also have been copied directly from Warcraft games without pretense. Also, the game uses audio exactly like sounds in Warcraft games and the game uses names of Warcraft characters such as Jaina Proudmoore, Gul’dan and Malfurion. The similarities are intentional, according to Blizzard, to capitalize on the popularity of the Warcraft franchise.
Blizzard states that many smartphone games infringe on the company’s intellectual property, and Glorious Saga is just a recent example. It is not clear why the company is acting specifically against this game.
There’s a possibility Blizzard itself is working on a Warcraft mobile game, Wowhead notes. On Monday, Xiaomi announced that it will be selling special versions of its Redmi Note 8 smartphone with a World of Warcraft theme, and last month a World of Warcraft update discovered a feature to log in with a phone number instead of an account name. . Blizzard is already working on a mobile version of Diablo for Android and iOS.