Top News

#1: Riot Sues Moonton For Copying League of Legends… Again

Riot Games has filed a lawsuit against Shanghai Moonton Technology, commonly known as Moonton Games, for “blatant copying” of League of Legends: Wild Rift (WR) in its game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB). According to Riot, the scope of plagiarism includes logos, trailers, characters, skins, accessories, and various types of artwork.

One of the examples provided by Riot includes the striking similarities of the splash art for WR Champion Braum’s “Crime City” skin and MLBB’s Baxia “Ba-Tender” skin. This was just one of the many examples Riot provided in their lawsuit, a copy of which you can read through here.

According to Riot, Moonton’s strategy of copying goes back to 2015 with the release of their MOBA Magic Rush which had copied multiple heroes’ looks and abilities from LoL. Then in 2016, Moonton released another game, Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA (ML), with more copying of the map, logos, and characters from Riot’s game. Riot proceeded to inform Google of ML’s infringement of copyright and it subsequently vanished from the store only to be resurrected in the form of MLBB with some cosmetic changes. Moonton proceeded to develop and update MLBB with what Riot calls a “bad faith business strategy” where the team would continually introduce infringing content to MLBB and only remove or revise said content when called out by Riot or the community.

This is actually Riot’s second time suing Moonton for copyright infringement. Back in 2017, the company filed a similar claim that was actually dismissed by the Central District Court of California on the grounds that the case would be better pursued in China because Riot was a subsidiary of Tencent, a Chinese company, and the fact that Tencent was already suing Moonton for a similar claim in China. The outcome of the lawsuit in China finally ended in Tencent’s (and Riot’s) favor, and Moonton were ordered to pay 19.4 million RMB (equivalent to $2.9 million).

The awarded damages were nothing more than a slap on the wrist for Moonton, as the lifetime revenue for MLBB up till the outcome of the first lawsuit (July 2018) amounted to almost $150 million, according to Sensor Tower. In fact, the total lifetime revenue of MLBB is $860 million, and it’s not hard to see why Moonton has persisted with its strategy of copying LoL. One might think that with that amount of money, Moonton would easily have been able to hire capable and creative staff to make something unique, but until something happens to make these tactics untenable, there may not be enough incentive.

This time around, Riot will attempt to keep the case tried in California by claiming that Moonton’s business has significant ties in the state. They call out Moonton’s US division in Culver City, job ads for their studio in Los Angeles, as well as US servers for MLBB hosted by Akamai. We will definitely keep an eye out on the outcome of this lawsuit and its potential repercussions.

#2: Q1 2022 Earnings Roundup

EA, Ubisoft, and Zynga all released their Q1 2022 earnings reports over the past week. What were the highlights?

EA’s Billion Dollar Mobile Division

EA’s mobile division surpassed a billion dollars in revenue for FY22, with almost $1.2 billion in net bookings representing 52% YoY growth. Its previous acquisitions of Glu Mobile, Playdemic, and Codemasters all contributed to the significant growth in revenue. Importantly, organic growth is not nearly as strong.

Notably, FIFA Mobile has seen a surge in new players in Q1 2022, likely due to their big revamp in January, growing 80% YoY. It, along with the upcoming Apex Legends and the recently announced Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, are tipped to be the key drivers of mobile growth for FY23. Of course, EA also has its hands full with struggles at Glu and is fighting through the post-IDFA world like everyone else.

Ubisoft to Release 4 New Mobile Titles

Ubisoft’s mobile revenue only represented 9% of its FY22 net bookings (approximately €191 million), but they have ambitious plans for the new financial year, with 4 mobile titles in development. Rainbow Six Mobile has already been announced, and in their earnings call CEO Yves Guillemot mentioned other games are in development in partnership with Tencent. The remaining games could be based on The Division, Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry, as they mention in their report that “Our growth will also benefit from our Free-to-Play releases, based notably on our biggest IPs. Some of these titles have been undergoing internal and external test phases and are in final stages of development. We expect they will be a meaningful driver of PRI progression in FY23.”.

Zynga’s Games Bookings Decrease While Advertising Rises

Zynga reported net bookings of $695 million over Q1 ‘22, which are down 3% YoY. Bookings from games were down 11% YoY while advertising was up 35% YoY, with the large increase in advertising revenue attributed to the Hypercasual portfolio. This makes sense as according to Sensor Tower, Zynga’s Hypercasual games made up a whopping 86% of its 246 million downloads over Q1 ‘22.

While the company’s game bookings have dropped, Zynga has been able to improve audience metrics, with DAU increasing to 40 million (increase of 3% YoY) and MAU of 209 million (increase of 27% YoY). The company has also managed to reduce the cost of revenue slightly to $252 million, or 36% of revenue versus the 38% in Q1 ‘21. The pending sale of Zynga to Take-Two meant that Zynga did not provide any forward guidance or host a conference call. It’s also worth noting that its President, Bernard Kim, recently left to become CEO of Match Group. If performance continues to wane (or if more leadership leaves), there’s a chance that Take-Two shareholders vote against the deal, but we’re not betting on that just yet.

Game Launch Radar

#1: Zenless Zone Zero

• Publisher: HoYoverse
• State: Closed Beta
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Midcore - RPG - Action RPG

• Quick thoughts:

  • HoYoverse keeps hitting us with new games, with Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) following Honkai Impact: Star Rail (announced 6 months ago).
  • The sign up period for the closed beta begins on May 13th and is open on iOS and PC (Windows).
  • The strategy of announcing two titles with what looks like similar action gameplay is curious, as there could have been a risk of splitting player interest. An interesting note is that the trailer for ZZZ features Japanese voice acting while Star Rail features English. Perhaps this could be a hint to the respective target audiences and why HoYoverse is unconcerned about the potential cannibalization of players.

#2: Wild Arena Survivors

• Publisher: Ubisoft
• State: Soft Launch
• Territories: Canada
• Classification: Midcore - Shooter - Battle Royale

• Quick thoughts:

  • Gameplay is a top-down 40-player Battle Royale with some key differences from genre norms.
  • The main departure from the genre is that your survivors come pre-equipped with weapons and you can’t swap them out during the match - only upgrade them. To keep the spirit of Battle Royale in the game, there are two slots for offensive and defensive support items which can be looted on the island. The pairing of weapons to survivors may be an attempt to differentiate itself from competitors, but has it watered down the Battle Royale formula too much?
  • They’ve also introduced a couple features that aim to increase player interaction, the first of which is that your survivors leave footsteps on the ground, which other survivors can spot and follow. The second is that the island on which you battle contains wild animals that will attack you on sight, forcing you to engage them, and thus alerting players around you. These two mechanics mean that players should encounter each other more frequently, and this, along with the 10-minute match times, make it more suitable for gaming on the go.

#3: Apex Legends Mobile

• Publisher: EA
• State: Launch
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Midcore - Shooter - Battle Royale

• Quick thoughts:

  • The launch of Apex Legends Mobile (ALM) is accompanied with a new Legend - Fade.
  • The mobile version is completely standalone and does not allow for cross-play or cross-progression.
  • ALM manages to capture the look & feel of its console and PC siblings into a highly polished mobile package and is a serious competitor in the Battle Royale genre. With more than 10 million pre-registrations before launch, ALM’s future looks bright and will bring the fight to both PUBG Mobile and Free Fire.

Other Game Announcements

• PUBG Mobile hits $8 billion lifetime revenue. Link
• Tencent’s open world Need For Speed leaked on Twitter. Link
• Apex Legends Mobile announces official global release date: May 17, 2022. Link
• Battlefield Mobile is performing another alpha test in Mexico, Colombia, Egypt, and Iraq. Link
• Bandai Namco to shut down Tales of Luminaria in July. Link
• Free Fire adds new anti-cheat measure that makes players invisible to hackers. Link
• FFVI: Ever Crisis, an episodic F2P version of the popular JRPG, is set to be released in September 2022. Link
• Battlefield: Mobile may only see global release in 2023. Link
• Call of Duty Warzone Mobile undergoes alpha testing under code name Project Aurora. Link

Company Announcements

• Nexon expects mobile revenue to double YoY. Link
• EA’s mobile revenue rose 52% YoY (driven by M&A). Link
• IAP bookings were down while Hypercasual & advertising were key drivers of Zynga’s Q1 revenue. Link
• Playtika’s revenue rose 6% YoY, but Switchcraft has underperformed. Link
• Mobile games make up just 9% of Ubisoft’s FY22 bookings. Link
• Liftoff, the parent brand of Vungle and GameRefinery, announced Jeremy Bondy as CEO. Link
• Roblox sees impressive increases in user engagement, but bookings slightly fell. Link
• Rovio targets releasing one major game every year. Link
• Kwalee opened its fourth international office in Portugal. Link

Ecosystem Announcements

• The game markets in US and Japan saw double-digit decreases in revenue in Q1 2022. Link
• Apple made more games revenue than Google in 2020 and 2021. Link
• Games marketing platform Exmox acquired Testerheld to expand its product testing services. Link
• InvestGame released its Q1 gaming deals activity report. Link
• Mobile studios Industrial Toys and PeopleFun named as some of the best places to work in the US. Link
• EA and FIFA part ways; EA’s new soccer games will be branded under EA Sports FC. Link

Content Worth Consuming

• Metaverse Demand Spurs Downloads of Avatar Social Apps to Triple in 2 Years (Data.ai): “data.ai’s mobile data shows that avatar-based social apps, such as ZEPETO and BUD, have seen the largest YoY growth in terms of downloads compared to any other social media category at 38 million – this is up 60% YoY and 215% from two years prior.“ Link
• Entrepreneurship & Instant Gaming (Mastering Retention): "Staying ahead of the curve and budding trends is of paramount importance in the modern landscape of the video game industry. Smart companies and CEO’s identify these trends in their early stages and experiment with them, which oftentimes leads to adopting them. This week on Mastering Retention, one of those CEO’s, Oliver Jones (Co-Founder & CEO at Bombay Play), speaks with Tom about a budding new trend that his company has recently adopted, and the intricacies of building and running a game studio.” Link
• Activision Blizzard's new "diversity space tool" gets frosty reception from devs (Game Developer): “Chomatas' explanation of how the tool works highlights a core complaint many game developers have: All of the characters run through the tool are being judged against a "norm," and that "norm" seems to be an able-bodied, white, cisgender straight man. Characters' diversity scores are increased when they deviate from that description.“ Link