Riot is Suing NetEase Over What It’s Claiming is a Valorant Clone

Valorant developer Riot Games is suing NetEase over its game, Hyper Front.

According to Polygon, a filing at a UK court claims that Hyper Front is a “copy of substantial parts of Valorant”. Riot claims there are a number of similarities, including characters, maps, weapons, weapon skins, weapons stats, and charms.

“All of our creative choices are mirrored in NetEase’s game,” said Riot Games’ lawyer, Dan Nabel. “We don’t think that changing the color of a character ability or slightly modifying the visual appearance changes the fact that it’s copyright infringement. It’s like that old saying, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.’”

Valorant is a free-to-play first-person shooter that pits two teams of five against each other, much the same as Hyper Front.

The lawsuit claims that NetEase did make changes following a complaint from the company, but the result is much the same, with only minor cosmetic differences to differentiate them.

Riot essentially wants the courts to force NetEase to shut down Hyper Front while also claiming “substantial” damages, however, they did not specify a figure. The lawsuit has been raised across various territories including UK, Germany, Brazil, and Singapore due to the territorial nature of copyright law.

“We don’t want to rely on one particular market to have this issue resolved,” said Nabel. “NetEase is a global publisher, as are we. We want them to know that we take the matter very seriously.”

This isn’t the first time NetEase has been the subject of copyright issues. Back in 2018, PUBG Corp. filed a lawsuit against the company over its games Knives Out and Rules of Survival, which were said to have infringed upon PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. A settlement was reached in 2019 but details of the settlement were not disclosed.

IGN’s Valorant review gave it 9/10 and said: “Valorant is the most fun I’ve had with a multiplayer FPS since Valve’s Team Fortress 2. The flexibility of its magically-infused cast paired with a deep arsenal makes for a magnificent competitive canvas if a tricky one to initially pick up. I’m already pondering new strategies to pull off with my friends in the future, and that joyous daydreaming won’t stop anytime soon. It may not be the prettiest modern FPS around, but its visual simplicity enables excellent clarity in every fight. With its teeth sunk in this deep, Valorant makes me want to keep playing until there’s nothing left to master.”

Want to read more about Valorant? Check out which Riot Games titles are heading to Game Pass as well as the touching Valorant tribute to a fan who died of cancer.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.