Chinese developer Gamebox saw its tank combat game Project Tank pulled from Facebook in early April after Wargaming.net alleged the game was a knockoff of its World of Tanks.
Now Gamebox has fought back, filing suit against Wargaming.net for "illicit competition and slander."
How Gamebox will manage a "slander" charge when the copycat accusations were presumably text-based is unknown. However, the company has a few things to say about the substance of Wargaming.net's claims.
"The accusation of PT by Wargaming has two major aims—gameplay and game image. However, the term gameplay is a very general concept in the online game industry. It merely refers to a set of game rules, which are not subject to any intellectual property protection," Gamebox said in a prepared statement. "Wargaming also made accusations about in-game images, which is even more unreasonable... The designers of Project Tank have done nothing but rebuild classic tanks that actually existed in history."
Gamebox presented multiple side-by-side comparisons (below) between its game and Wargaming.net's World of Tanks. There are some undeniable similarities, but as Gamebox points out, several of those have to do with the common subject matter. What do you think?
Based solely on this article, I think Project tank has some real teeth to the lawsuit. They are right in that you can't copyright a game mechanic. As far as copying art aspects, Project tank's art is obviously at a glance superior, and thus, not a copy. If they can prove they could have been receiving revenue during the time they were banned from facebook, Wargaming.net could be looking at some serious hits to their wallet.
Hopefully this will curb some of this finger pointing, passive aggressive, IP nonsense going on.
Hah. Somehow Gamebox decides not to show a proper screenshot of their game, that would reveal how Project Tank has copied even WoT UI to the smallest detail. Other comparison shots and videos show where the real problem is. It is not in the design of tanks or very similar gameplay, but copying World of Tanks in all areas.
I did the numbers for a game developed in Beijing over a year ago called Army Rage, to make it commercially viable in Europe. It had tanks, but was nothing like World of Tanks. They didn't have any issues that I am aware of. It could be as Jukka said that there was significant UI and gameplay copying, with some minor artistic changes. We call this "reskinning", and it seems to me more of this is done in China than actual original game development. Do we have any screenshots of what the actual game looks like?
If they reskinned WoT and left it in China, likely they would have gotten away with it. Parking it on Facebook is just asking for trouble. I would like more information, possibly a rebuttal from Wargaming.net, before I make a judgement.
This is a blatant copy of WoT, in fact it was so much so that they exposed their less than reputable game balance ideas in their patent on the WoT forums.
I saw the PR release source of this “report” in China about one week ago. Oddly, they didn't mention where or how they "submitted a formal charge to the court in late April" (for the full PR release content, see dotmmo: http://www.dotmmo.com/prgamebox-accuses-wargaming-of-slander-world-of-tanks-may- end-its-monopoly-18814.html btw LOL for that title).
For we can check Wargaming suing Changyou case by case number (1:13-cv-03444), court (Illinois Northern District Court) even the complaint content. Where is the evidence for Gamebox sue Wargaming? Did they show it or can you find it?
Hopefully this will curb some of this finger pointing, passive aggressive, IP nonsense going on.
If they reskinned WoT and left it in China, likely they would have gotten away with it. Parking it on Facebook is just asking for trouble. I would like more information, possibly a rebuttal from Wargaming.net, before I make a judgement.
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end-its-monopoly-18814.html btw LOL for that title).
For we can check Wargaming suing Changyou case by case number (1:13-cv-03444), court (Illinois Northern District Court) even the complaint content. Where is the evidence for Gamebox sue Wargaming? Did they show it or can you find it?