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Tencent to face ByteDance’s Moonton in court over video game infringement allegations amid a years-long feud

  • Moonton, which ByteDance acquired last year, alleges that Tencent infringed on the intellectual property of its popular game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
  • The companies have been locked in court battles for years, which intensified after the acquisition and an industry crackdown in China

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Mooton’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is one of the biggest mobile games in Southeast Asia. Photo: Handout
Ben Jiangin Beijing
Chinese video gaming giant Tencent Holdings will stand trial starting Tuesday to face allegations of copyright infringement from a subsidiary of rival ByteDance, according to an updated schedule on the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court’s website.
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Shanghai Moonton Technology claims that Tencent infringed on the rights of its hit video game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, which is especially popular in Southeast Asia. The alleged violations include those of rights to authorship, reproduction, and communications related to the title.

The game’s popularity helped catapult Moonton up the ranks in overseas users, turning it into one of China’s most successful gaming studios outside the country’s borders. This attracted attention from Tencent, whose Honour of Kings is one of the highest-earning titles in the world. Tencent pursued an acquisition of Moonton, but it was ultimately outbid last year by ByteDance, which had been ramping up its gaming operations in competition with its Shenzhen-based rival.

The upcoming court case is the latest salvo in a bitter gaming feud between the two companies. In a previous lawsuit that remains ongoing, Tencent alleged that Mobile Legends violated its intellectual property in Honour of Kings and League of Legends.

In another unsuccessful case in the US, a Californian court this month threw out a lawsuit from Tencent subsidiary Riot Games that accused Moonton of infringing on content and promotional collateral from the mobile game League of Legends: Wild Rift.

As this saga has unfurled, China’s video game industry has faced a regulatory crackdown from Beijing. Tencent went 15 months without receiving any licenses for new games to be sold in China. ByteDance was awarded a new license a couple months earlier.
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Yet Tencent still has much deeper pockets than ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. Honour of Kings continues to be especially lucrative, raking in US$190 million across Apple’s App Store and Google Play in September, according to Sensor Tower.
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