Gaming

Honor of Kings, World’s Top Grossing Mobile Game, Faces Allegations of Plagiarism

Apr 21, 2022, 20:04pm2022/04/21 20:04:44 Pandaily

At noon on Thursday, For All Time, a love story mobile game published by NetEase<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder />, released an image on its official Weibo account which drew comparisons between its promotional materials and those used by Honor of Kings, a game released by Tencent<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder />. The NetEase’s game tagged Honor of Kings in the post.

The post shows that a picture of the game character adjustment released by Honor of Kings on April 14 and the promotional poster of NetEase<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder />‘s For All Time released on June 27 last year have overlapping design elements. In the comments, the official account of NetEase<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder />‘s another online game Justice Online also vouched its support, saying that an “Anti-Tencent<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder /> Office” should be established.

Subsequently, the Honor of Kings’ supplier Hangzhou Fullspeed Network announced: “We have taken notice of the online discussion in regard to the promotional designs. On April 14, the column announcement picture designed by our company for the Honor of Kings may be similar to other product announcement maps. The company is urgently investigating the situation of the design’s creation and will provide a complete explanation as soon as possible.”

This is not the first time that the Honor of Kings has been suspected of plagiarism. Previously, the game’s derivative “Code: Zero Three” was found to have copied Genshin Impact’s promotional poster, which used material from the latter’s game Cider Lake.

After that incident, the company issued an apology the next day, saying that the overlap was caused by the outsourced company in charge of designing the post. Tencent<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder /> said it would look into the matter and seriously deal with the relevant personnel of this incident.

In early April, statistics website Sensor Tower released a report in which it tallied the global revenue of mobile games in the first quarter of 2022. Tencent<img decoding="async" class="trade-card__loading" layout="fixed" height="50" width="50" src="https://assets.pandaily.com/uploads/2021/12/loading.png" placeholder />‘s “Honor of Kings” topped the list with a revenue of $735 million.