Who is in "Yin Yang" and "Glory of the King": King for 8 years, copied but not defeated

"A lawsuit has been filed, and rights protection will be carried out through legal channels."

On March 21, NetEase's mobile game "Onmyoji" publicly criticized the character image in Tencent's "Honor of Kings" on Weibo Plagiarism, but the official "Honor of Kings" responded harshly, "Don't touch porcelain."

For a time, many official game accounts stepped down to support or criticize each other.

In the end, this major case in the gaming industry, which was hotly searched on Weibo for many days, ended on the 23rd when the customer service of "Onmyoji" posted a lawyer's letter announcing that it would take legal action.

However, Mouyu discovered that this is not the first time that "Honor of Kings" has been involved in a "plagiarism" scandal.

According to incomplete statistics, since "Honor of Kings" was launched in 2015, there have been as many as ten original hero paintings or posters suspected of plagiarism, which are related to many game manufacturers.

However, in the subsequent development process of these accusations, whether "Honor of Kings" stated that it would investigate the supplier's responsibility or conduct "cold treatment", most of them fell into disuse.

"Yin Yang" "Glory of Kings"

On March 21, the new hero Da Siming was launched in "Glory of Kings". At about 8 o'clock that night, it was used by NetEase's mobile game "Onmyoji". He named him on Weibo and used extremely sharp words to accuse the other party of plagiarizing the character image of his character "SP Shen Qihuang":

"I've made a lot of money, don't you really consider hiring an artist with more original inspiration?"

"If you want to link up, please contact the sweeper directly"

Related entries #Onmyoji King of Glory#, #天 Fall There's Huang's Face Holding #, #王之综合大思明# immediately became hot searches, among which the topic #Onmyoji King of Glory# even reached the fourth place in the hot search list.

In less than an hour, "Onmyoji" continued to play. The creative assistant of "Onmyoji" publicly released a "reward" and invited all creators to create under the hot topic of #天 Falls有黄的面狠#.

An hour later, the "Onmyoji" IP series game "The Battle of Heianjing" participated in the group, forwarded this Weibo, and continued to tease "Honor of Kings", hoping The other party "really wants to make it look better as a material library."

Compared with NetEase’s group attack, the response of “Honor of Kings” seems to be less confident, and it did not give a positive answer to the “plagiarism” incident in the first time. There is only a reply with a suspicious connotation at the bottom of the Weibo promoting the new hero:

"Holding the divine sword in hand, cutting off all evil, all things are born, and the yin and yang are controlled by me."

The "Glory of Kings" IP series fighting game "Glory of Kings: Breaking Dawn" also came to help, but the response also did not involve the issue of "plagiarism".

NetEase’s offensive continues. At about 7 pm on the second day, "Onmyoji" Weibo continued to attack, saying that it had sent a lawyer's letter to "Honor of Kings".

In this lawyer's letter, NetEase pointed out that "Honor of Kings" is suspected of infringing the "Onmyoji" material, in addition to the previously mentioned "Da Siming" suspected of plagiarism In addition to the "SP God Qiara" in "Onmyoji", there is also the "Honor of Kings" game character skin "Li Bai·Zangetsu Kenshin" which is suspected of plagiarizing the "Onmyoji" game character "Susanoo".

At this point, the two sides have officially entered the legal level from a verbal lawsuit.

At 11:20 that night, "Honor of Kings" also responded to the "plagiarism" incident for the first time. However, the response was not very formal. The role of Di Renjie, who is responsible for "judging the case" in the game, was used as a "mouth substitute" to defend NetEase's lawyer's letter.

Di Renjie’s verdict is as follows.

In this response, Tencent defined NetEase’s behavior as “piracy” and claimed that if NetEase’s plagiarism identification standards were followed, NetEase would also be suspected of plagiarizing too much. The most popular character in "Glory of Kings".

In response to this, "Onmyoji" made its last response, sending a concise and clear "?" and using the words of the character Kagura in the game, "I wonder when I will be able to develop such skills. .." with pictures in response.

Judging from the content released by both parties, NetEase is obviously more prepared, from publishing the first Weibo post, to publishing creative incentives to encourage players to participate, to directly directing them the next day Publish lawyer's letter.

Looking at Tencent's attitude, it is obvious that it is "cooling down" the incident and trying to avoid a positive response in the early stage. The release of the lawyer's letter exceeded the expectations of "Honor of Kings", so it was not until 11:20 that it was posted on Weibo to explain.

According to Mouyu statistics, since the launch of "Honor of Kings", there have been dozens of cases of suspected plagiarism, but most of them have stayed on "Weibo to resolve the case", and there are very few cases that have reached the legal level. few.

This is also the reason why supporters of "Honor of Kings" believe that these are "frivolous" problems with other games.

Games that "hit porcelain" in those years

As a MOBA mobile game developed by Tencent, "Honor of Kings" has many references to the MOBA PC game "League of Legends" in its early hero creation and character skills. The original painting of the hero is also quite similar to the former.

Such as the first generation Hua Mulan poster of "Honor of Kings" and the Riven poster of "League of Legends".

The same situation also occurs with Feng Nu and Wang Zhaojun, Carter and Jing Ke, Nan Qiang with Liu Bei, Ai Xi and Irene, Annie and Angela, etc. An early role.

The use of internal resources in "Honor of Kings" not only stops at "League of Legends", which is also a MOBA game, but also draws lessons from other Tencent games.

As for the paid skins, because the paid skins require a new theme for the hero’s costumes, and they need to break out of the character’s original image logic, many players have found it useful. characters from other games.

For example, Wang Zhaojun’s “Idol Singer” themed skin seems to have borrowed the appearance of the Herjuna Tianlai singer from “Legion of Demons”.

Yu Ji-Miss Caribbean is suspected of borrowing from the sex trick expert Belbet in the PSP game "Ark of Light".

Similar cases include Sun Shangxiang's "Rose Lover" skin and the character image in the Korean card game "Rocky Showdown", and Zhou Yu's "Admiral" skin and "One Piece" "The image of Kizaru in ".

Most of the "plagiarism" issues that have been exposed are mainly made up of small-scale denunciations by players of other games because most of the reference objects are overseas game manufacturers. The game manufacturers have not directly asked for explanations.

In the few cases where it is discovered that borrowing from domestic games, suppliers have become the main ones to bear responsibility. On October 26, 2021, the official Weibo of "Honor of Kings" released a suspense poster of a new game in the "Honor of Kings" series "Codename: Zero Three".

This poster was later discovered by netizens and used the "Starfall Lake" scene in MiHoYo's "Genshin Impact".

Following up, the "Codename - Zero Three" Bilibili account quickly issued an apology for the incident and stated that Tencent would deal with the relevant personnel of the outsourcing company seriously.

But then, on April 21, 2022, it was once again revealed that the poster of "Honor of Kings" plagiarized materials from NetEase's mobile game "Painted Traveler in Time and Space". The incident was very popular at the time and quickly topped the list of hot searches.

After the incident fermented, the supplier of "Honor of Kings" once again came out to claim the blame, stating that "the column announcement graphics designed for Honor of Kings may have similar situations to other product announcement graphics, and we are urgently Investigate the actual circumstances surrounding the creation of this design.”

Subsequently, the supplier Full Speed ​​Network handed over a questionnaire and disclosed the design ideas of the promotional page and the changes and adjustments during the production process.

Although this response failed to satisfy the players, some people in the legal field pointed out that determining "plagiarism" from a judicial perspective is not a "clear-cut" matter, and the determination of specific cases is often quite complicated.

China News Weekly consulted You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, regarding the case of "Onmyoji" accusing "Honor of Kings". The latter believed that if there were two pictures, the feature files were somewhat similar, and filed a lawsuit If you sue, the court may not find it infringing.

So for a work of art, to what extent does it need to be considered infringing?

You Yunting believes that if "Honor of Kings" is completely consistent in some features such as character naming and artistic images, the court may determine infringement for a single artistic work.

Art, the cost-effective choice

Currently in China, game art outsourcing has become a mainstream choice.

Domestic first-line game manufacturers Tencent, NetEase, and Lilith only retain 20% to 30% of their art materials for self-production.

For example, the domestic 3A Light "Black Myth: Wukong", according to relevant reports by the person in charge Yang Qi, the scenes, characters, and props were also outsourced.

The core reason for art outsourcing is naturally cost control.

Because it is a three-party operation and it is extremely difficult to determine infringement, it is not uncommon for domestic game art to be plagiarized. Even some of the art materials for plagiarized games were produced by the same artist from the same supplier.

This situation is also reflected when the AI ​​wave sweeps the gaming industry.

The art industry became the first department to be swept away. As early as the beginning of 2023, Huang Yimeng, the founder of Xindong Network, broke the news on Twitter:

"Recently chatting with two game teams, the first team cut down the original painting outsourcing company, and the second team cut down the translation outsourcing company. Cut off."

The period from 2022 to 2023 is a key node for the game industry to survive the cold winter. The art team has become the first target of more game companies.

In May 2023, Youzu Networks stated in a conference call that the company had reduced 2D art outsourcing costs by 25% through the application of AI, and expected to achieve greater cost reductions by the end of the year.

NetEase, which has made full efforts to enter the AI ​​sector as early as 2017, according to official information, has now applied its self-developed AI technology to the entire process of game industrialization, improving work efficiency in key links by up to 90%.

The addition of AI further reduces the cost of game art and makes the problem of plagiarism more hidden.

Take NetEase, which is currently scolding Tencent on Weibo as an example. In October last year, some players broke the news that content related to the "Da Song Toutiao" in NetEase's mobile game "Nishui Han" was suspected of being fed by fan art created by players, making the drawings in newspapers and fan art appear strikingly similar.

#The fanart creation community comes from LOFTER, another light blogging product of NetEase. Previously, in March last year, the product had caused dissatisfaction among platform creators due to the launch of the AI ​​drawing function "Lao Fu Ge Drawing Machine". This resulted in the official issuing an apology and promising to launch an anti-AI crawling function for the platform’s works, respecting and protecting the creators’ wishes not to be “learned and trained by AI.”

Plagiarism of art works can still be detected. If the original painting is used to train AI, and then the AI ​​creates the work, how can you protect your rights? At present, there is no effective way to deal with this behavior in China.

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