Idea v. Expression: Game Studio Bluehole Gets Its Fur Up Over Epic Games Putting 100 Vs. 100 Player Battle Royale Into Game
from the needless-anger dept
Of all the things that most people get wrong about copyright law, the idea/expression dichotomy has to rank near the top. The confusion over this is easily explained by the pervasive ownership culture that has emerged organically from an intellectual property ecosystem that only moves in the direction of more protectionism. Because of that culture, most people simply assume that the creation of the idea is itself a copyrightable thing, rather than the reality which is that copyright only applies to specific expression. The useful example at hand is that one cannot copyright a superhero named after an animal that wears a mask and a cape, but one can copyright Batman, particularly any books, comics, or movies in which Batman is depicted.
As already stated, this reality evades many people. But it probably shouldn't evade those in industries dominated by copyright, such as the video game industry. Despite that, Bluehole, developers of the wildly popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer, appears to have its fur up over another studio, Epic Games, releasing a "battle royale" game mode for its Fortnite title.
In a press release this morning, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer Bluehole took a shot at Epic Games, calling out Fortnite for cloning the 100-man PVP gameplay style with its upcoming free update ‘Battle Royale.’
“We’ve had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG’s development as they are the creators of [Unreal Engine 4], the engine we licensed for the game,” Bluehole vice president Chang Han Kim said in the press release. “After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.”
This is a game studio getting upset over what is purely an idea, not an expression. Having 100 players face off against another 100 players in a game mode is not expression and is no more unique than, say, first-person shooter games, itself a genre with innumerable entrants. Bluehole goes on to note that it is going to "contemplate further action", but whatever that action would be would not include a successful legal action against Epic Games. There is simply nothing remotely like copyright infringement here.
Strangely, Bluehole also makes much of its claim that Epic Games referenced PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds to promote Fortnite, which sort of sounds like trademark law territory. The problem, both from a legal standpoint and from a public relations standpoint, is that this claim appears to amount to Epic Games applauding Bluehole on the Playstation Blog.
This may be a reference to Epic creative director Donald Mustard’s note on the PlayStation Blog, in which he wrote: “We love Battle Royale games like PUBG and thought Fortnite would make a great foundation for our own version.”
But that's neither trademark infringement nor evidence for copyright infringement. Even as Epic gives a full-throated acknowledgement that it is seeking to emulate a game mode from Bluehole's game, it's just a game mode, not a specific expression. That simply isn't copyright infringement, any more so than someone saying, "Doom was great, so now I want to make a first-person shooter game like it."
Idea/expression dichotomy: learn it, folks. It will keep you from paying lawyers to lose a case for you.
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Filed Under: battle royale, copyright, expression, fortnite, idea, playerunkown's battlegrounds, video games
Companies: bluehole, epic games
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Say it with me
If Doom copyrighted the FPS game we would never have the breath of games we have today.
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Re: Say it with me
You cannot copyright rules. read, the MUTHAFUCKING ARTICLE!
FPS, RTS, 100 vs 100 are nothing but a part of the "rules" of how the game plays.
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Heck in most cases you almost rip something off so long as enough has been changed to ensure that consumers can recognize it as a separate product from another.
Derivative works are also protected by fair use laws. Sure you still take a risk by doing so because the lawsuit alone could be enough to sink your business, not to mention the possibility of a judge existing with the same limited knowledge you display or worse!
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Re: Re: Say it with me
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It's not even so much an idea as an indication of current technology.
Home computers with GUIs showed up from multiple companies at the same time because the processors and other chips necessary matured and became affordable at the same for all of them. Internet-connected games showed up from multiple companies as everyone got internet connections.
And now with high-speed internet and the advent of cloud server farms handling much of the processing, hundred-user game become possible for everyone at once.
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QFT. My last computer wouldn't handle 5 vs 5 players. My current computer might handle maybe 10 vs 10 to 20 vs 20, depending on how much load each player adds. 100 vs 100 requires a GOOD new computer, but you can actually do it now whereas it would have been nigh-on impossible 10 years ago... possibly 5 years ago.
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It's actually not about copyright or trademark
More info came out a few days later, it's not about the game mode, it's because Epic Games also provides the game engine for PUBG.
Bluehole's main concern seems to be that Epic is going to screw them over with the game engine now. And their secondary concern is that they felt like Epic was making it seem that that Bluehole was officially involved in Epic's battle royale mode in Fortnight.
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Re: It's actually not about copyright or trademark
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They also don't like that Epic is using the old "If you liked X try Y" marketing strategy "against" them. Which again, as just about every bag of generic cereal in the supermarket can attest, Epic is allowed to. But using it to hone in on a small-time competitor is kind of a dick move.
This is the Zynga situation all over again. If you don't recall, Zynga went around and found promising games on Facebook then released near clones that were just slightly different enough to not infringe any copyrights, since game concepts aren't copyrightable but specific art elements are. People were pissed that their games were getting copied so quickly by professionals, but there's NOTHING they could do. It's scummy, and it really is unfortunate for small time facebook app creators, but it's legal.
Overall I think the journalistic integrity of this article is much lower than the standard usually set by Techdirt. Not only did he get the number of players in a game wrong (up to 20 five-man teams, not 100 v 100 teamfight) but this article is clearly misleading people into thinking that Bluehole is getting all copyright-lawsuit-threateny when that is not the connotation of the linked article at all. They are just upset that a company they've been working closely with is going to be stealing their market share. TOTALLY LEGAL, but understandable.
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Re: It's actually not about copyright or trademark
So in a sense, Bluehole WAS/IS officially involved, just not in the capacity they wished it to be perceived by the general public. Just like every other developer using their game engine is officially involved with EPIC.
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Re: It's actually not about copyright or trademark
The second concern is totally inaccurate.
And both concerns were not mentioned at all in the initial blustering.
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Re: It's actually not about copyright or trademark
Also, saying that you're inspired by something does not make it seem like that thing is involved in your version.
This is just a silly case of hurt feelings.
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But PlayerUnknown was the first creator (or, at the very least first successful developer for the genre). He made the DayZ: Battle Royal mod for ARMA, then consulted on the H1Z1: Battle Royal mod. Then made PUBG as a standalone.
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Title's slightly misleading
That's kind of what the whole Battle Royale thing implies, too. There's just one winner, not a winning "side". Comes from a novel and a movie of the same name, where a bunch of kids are dropped on an island and told to kill each other until only one survivor remains.
I'd like to see large-scale 100 on 100 battles, but these are not the games for that.
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While the entymology of the term remains a little unclear—it may or may not have originated within the world of cockfighting—the first citation of the phrase “battle royal” comes from 17th century play All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple. The “royal” (or “royale”) part of the phrase acts as an intensifier; as a whole, the phrase typically means “a battle fit for a king”. Most people today would know the phrase from either the novel/film “Battle Royale” or the “battle royal” match type found in professional wrestling.
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etymology is the word to look for in regards to the study of a words origin and meaning.
I am not knocking that you made a typo, just clarifying in case another reader happens by and becomes confused.
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Hey, I appreciate the correction. It means I have another word that I can slap into PhraseExpress for future-proofing against further such typos. (Seriously, "pseudo" is such a hard word to remember the exact spelling for!)
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Bluehole?
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Meanwhile....
EVE Online still holds the record with 7800 people, 2800 concurrently.
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Bad example. "Batman" is an idea expressed in many, many different ways. Although they decided character concepts are copyrightable, they threw the idea vs expression rule out the window to do so.
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Neither the idea of an animal-themed costumed superhero nor the idea of a man-bat (i.e., an anthropomorphic male bat, or a “bat-man”) could ever be copyrighted. They are generic concepts. The Batman of DC Comics fame, however, is copyrighted because he is a specific expression of a specific idea. Whether Marvel Comics could publish a story containing a man-bat that is literally called “a bat-man” within the story, however, is a matter for the trademark lawyers.
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If you look at how the law was worded an "Expression" was obviously intended to be something you can actually physically copy. You can't make a copy of a character because it's just an idea A template that you can use to make new works with.
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The Hand Drawing the Hand Drawing the Hand...
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Not really, no. Neither the battle royale mode of Fortnite nor PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds contain any kind of actual story or justification. (PUBG players have no problem with this; they generally do not care about the reason why 100 people are fighting each other to the death on a secluded island somewhere off the coast of Russia.) You could, however, argue that the Hunger Games franchise at least inspired the creation of PUBG and H1Z1.
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I should have attended law school.
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http://superredundant.com/?comic=126-the-jinx
Not based on any copyrighted superhero that I'm aware of. :)
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I don't think that's Epic trying to enter the battleroyale genre. It feels more like offering a F2P entry point into their Fortnite franchise via a currently hyped game mode and hoping some players convert to paid customers for the tower defence mode. If they were serious about making a battleroyale game, they can just dust off UT2004 and give it the HD treatment. And I would pay good money for a UT2004-based battleroyale.
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