PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds overseer PUBG Corp has settled its lawsuit against Chinese tech giant NetEase, according to a recent court order spotted by The McArthur Law Firm.
PUBG Corp first took NetEase to court back in April 2018, and accused the Chinese company of replicating “audio and visual elements” from Battlegrounds in its mobile games Knives Out and Rules of Survival.
The studio claimed NetEase had “committed unlawful, unfair, an/or fraudulent business acts by copying PUBG’s Battlegrounds game in each version of their Rules of Survival and Knives Out games,” and highlighted the alleged infringements in the side-by-side comparisons included below.
The Chinese outfit countered by claiming PUBG Corp couldn’t be allowed to monopolize the entire battle royale genre, and said the company’s lawsuit was a “shameless attempt” to abuse copyright law.
After that spot of legal argy-bargy, however, both companies have chosen to settle, and are currently in the process of dismissing the lawsuit.
It’s a development that means we might never know the specific details surrounding the case, but upcoming changes to both Knives Out and Rules of Survival might indicate how NetEase managed to placate PUBG Corp.
