Riot Games is suing steadfast NetEase implicit the Chinese company’s Hyper Front, a five-on-five mobile shooter that Riot alleges is simply a Valorant clone. It’s besides bringing the lawsuit to courts successful the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and Singapore, Riot Games lawyer Dan Nabel told Polygon. The lawsuits alteration somewhat successful each country, based connected their respective copyright laws, but the thrust of the contented is the aforesaid — that Hyper Front is simply a “copy of important parts of Valorant,” arsenic Riot’s lawyers assertion successful their U.K. filing.

Hyper Front, similar Valorant, is simply a free-to-play first-person shooter wherever teams of 5 play against each different successful a fig of antithetic modes. Riot Games released Valorant successful 2020 connected Windows PC, and it’s presently moving connected a mobile version, announced successful 2021. As of that year, Valorant averaged more than 14 cardinal players per month.

Hyper Front was released successful 2022 connected Android and iOS. Player information for Hyper Front is not available, though it’s listed connected the Google Play Store arsenic having much than 1 cardinal downloads and much than 48,000 reviews. It’s not presently disposable to play successful the U.S., wherever Riot Games is headquartered. Riot lays retired a fig of similarities betwixt the 2 games successful its U.K. suit — characters, maps, weapons, limb skins, and charms, adjacent going arsenic acold arsenic comparing limb stats. The workplace claims successful the suit that NetEase did modify Hyper Front somewhat aft Riot’s archetypal complaints, arsenic demonstrated successful the images below. Still, Riot says the copyright infringement goes beyond conscionable that.

“All of our originative choices are mirrored successful NetEase’s game,” Nabel told Polygon. “We don’t deliberation that changing the colour of a quality quality oregon somewhat modifying the ocular quality changes the information that it’s copyright infringement. It’s similar that aged saying, ‘You tin enactment lipstick connected a pig, but it’s inactive a pig.’”

NetEase has not responded to Polygon’s petition for comment.

Nabel compared the Hyper Front suit to different lawsuit betwixt NetEase and PUBG Corp. implicit NetEase’s Knives Out and Rules of Survival, which PUBG Corp. said were infringing connected PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. That case, filed successful a U.S. tribunal successful 2018, was settled successful 2019, but the presumption of the colony were not disclosed.

Riot Games is looking for the courts to unit NetEase to unopen down Hyper Front, and for “substantial” damages — Riot didn’t specify a figure. Nabel told Polygon that the institution is litigating the contented successful aggregate courts due to the fact that “copyright is territorial,” with antithetic laws successful antithetic areas of the world. “We don’t privation to trust connected 1 peculiar marketplace to person this contented resolved,” Nabel said. “NetEase is simply a planetary publisher, arsenic are we. We privation them to cognize that we instrumentality the substance precise seriously.”

Riot Games has surely proved that successful the past, arsenic it’s filed a fig of lawsuits against companies making copies of its games. Earlier this year, Riot sued implicit a League of Legends “ripoff” and a Teamfight Tactics “knockoff.” In 2018, Riot, done genitor institution Tencent Holdings, won a $2.9 cardinal lawsuit implicit a antithetic League of Legends lookalike.