Comments on: How to sue a cloner https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2018/04/06/how-to-sue-a-cloner/ My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things. Tue, 10 Apr 2018 15:07:35 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Jan https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2018/04/06/how-to-sue-a-cloner/comment-page-1/#comment-109416 Tue, 10 Apr 2018 15:07:35 +0000 https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=2437#comment-109416 A genre as it is can not be copyrightable (from my point of view), since it is a description of an idea and is loosely defined with prefferation to some unique or distinct game mechanics compared to other genres or it’s inherited family genre, hence the problems when it comes with definitions of game genres. In terms of Tetris, the game itself is a genre and it’s hard to make similar genre to it (cause it uses all variations of four blocks), unless you like make Pentris, which would add an extra block, though it could be debatable if the format itself would be exactly the same, how much of a clone of the original the game would be.
PUBG, coming from survival genre, has nothing much original in it’s game and used ideas of others to make the game. Looking at both games, they are going for the semi-realistic or realistic look & feel, but art and objects are not the same. Also one is a PC game other is a mobile game, meaning the mechanics & experiance playing the game should be diferent or to say one simulates the experiance of the play of a nother, neither have games for both markets.
I will stop here and woun’t go more into it, cause I haven’t played either and can’t judge if the look-a-feels experiance would be enough to call it a direct clone, if playing one without knowing it’s name. But if one game does use the catchphrase of a nother and it isn’t a common catchphrase, it should change it.

In addition this reminded me there is also a mobile game called Mobile Legends (youtube & it’s adds, otherwise I wouldn’t know) and it’s well practically a look-a-like of Leagues of Legends, but did anyone hear anything about that? No. Though it seems there is also an ongoing second lawsuit. (looked up upon finishing writting, had no idea about it)

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