Ubisoft is suing Apple and Google for a carbon copy game of Rainbow Six: Siege

The game is called Area F2 and was created by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.’s Ejoy.com.

In a lawsuit filed in the federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, Ubisoft has said that Area F2 is a “near carbon copy” of Rainbow Six: Siege where “virtually every aspect” is cloned from R6S. Bloomberg has reported that Ubisoft had already notified Apple and Google of the game, but that Apple and Google have both refused to remove the game from Google Play and the App store.

EJOY, the developers of Area F2 describes the game as “The first 5v5 Close-Quarters Battle (AKA CQB) FPS shooting game on mobile devices.”

Area F2 was released to the public last month, but the game has been advertised since last year already.

The similarities

The similarities are immediately noticeable, and Ubisoft has said in the lawsuit that these similarities cannot “seriously be disputed.”

Rainbow Six: Siege has 55 million registered players worldwide, and the game is played by more than three million players each day.

Rainbow Six: Siege is also played as an extremely competitive “Esport”, with professional and semi-professional teams competing for millions of dollars in prizes.

Ubisoft has said that “R6S is among the most popular competitive multiplayer games in the world, and is among Ubisoft’s most valuable intellectual properties. Virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen, and everything in between.”

Rainbow Six: Siege is based on Tom Clancy’s novel Rainbow Six and explores the adventures of a multinational counter-terrorism unit, codenamed Rainbow.

The legal ramifications

Ubisoft claims that competitors are constantly looking for ways to piggyback off the fame and popularity of the game, to capture the attention and money of its scores of loyal players worldwide.

Copyright law regarding Games is a complex and highly debated subject, with many games being copied to capture audiences. These games are commonly copied on mobile platforms, often skirting the fringes of legality.

Some elements can’t be copyrighted in the United States, such as the games mechanics, but intellectual property and visual design elements are open to copyright. This is why the suit will focus on things like the operator selection and post-game screens.

Only time will tell what comes of this lawsuit, but it definitely shows the gaming community that copyright infringement won’t be tolerated by Ubisoft and other giants in the gaming industry.

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