Tencent's "Yuanmeng Star" has been prosecuted for plagiarism.
On March 28th, NetEase (09999. HK, Nasdaq: NTES) game "Egg Party" well-known UGC map creator @ Qianzhong Jiufa claimed that his original map "Yinlan" had been repeatedly plagiarized in Tencent's game "Yuanmeng Star" for a long time, and has filed a lawsuit against Tencent.
It is understood that UGC maps are one of the core gameplay of Egg Party, with built-in map editing tools. Players can use these tools to freely create maps, design levels, and publicly release them for other players to play. The built-in editor provides various types of preset map components such as terrain, decorations, objects, functions, mechanisms, combinations, etc. Players only need to drag the preset components into the map and perform basic operations such as rotation and movement with the assistance of operations to create a simple map. When creating complex maps, the editor also provides advanced features for advanced creators.
Creator @ Qianzhong Jiu also stated that his original map was plagiarized at the pixel level during the testing of Yuanmeng Star. Whether it was the overall logic, gameplay settings, or prop placement, some even had the same color, almost copied one-to-one.
Subsequently, the official Weibo account of @ NetEase Egg Party also stated, "Plagiarism is heartbreaking to us, and this is not an exception. For a long time, creators have frequently spoken out about the phenomenon of park works being plagiarized and moved, hoping that their original works can be protected. Creation is difficult because every park map is born with a lot of energy and effort; but protecting rights is even more difficult, which requires professional legal knowledge and may require significant costs, challenging enormous uncertainty with individual efforts."
The official further stated, "At the beginning of this year, we launched the 'Creator Rights Protection Center' and have received nearly a hundred requests for rights protection from creators. We will hire a professional team of lawyers to provide comprehensive rights protection assistance to authors and bear all possible rights protection costs, including litigation fees, notarization fees, and lawyer fees. In the future, we will continue to increase our support in rights protection to support everyone in the face of injustice."
According to the Tianyancha App, the cause of the case is a copyright ownership and infringement dispute. The plaintiff is Mr. W, and the defendants include four companies: Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd., Tencent Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., and Shenzhen Tencent Tianyou Technology Co., Ltd. The case will be heard in the Nanjing Intermediate People's Court of Jiangsu Province on May 15th.
According to Tianyan Risk Information, Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Co., Ltd. has been sued multiple times for copyright ownership, infringement disputes, and infringement of the right to network dissemination of work information.
On the same day, the official Weibo account of @ Yuanmeng Star released a statement on "Protection of Original Map Creation", stating that recently, after receiving a complaint from the author of the "Yinlan" map, after manual review, "Yuanmeng Star" has taken down all the complained related creative maps and notified the complained players via in-game email in accordance with the handling principles in the "Yuanmeng Star Infringement Complaint Notification Guidelines". Subsequently, the operation team of "Yuanmeng Star" further upgraded the handling policy, prohibiting all players from publishing and using players with the keyword "Yin Lan" to create maps.
"If any suspected violations related to player map creation are found in" Yuanmeng Star "in the future, we encourage players and creators to report and complain about the suspected infringement of player map creation through the game's map reporting function and official rights protection channels, or through the official accounts of" Yuanmeng Star "," Yuanmeng Star Dream Bureau ", Dream Butler, and other channels. We will handle it seriously." @ Yuanmeng Star's official Weibo account stated.
On December 15, 2023, the party game "Yuanmeng Star" developed by Tencent Tianmei Studio was launched on the entire platform, in fierce competition with NetEase's "Egg Party". Chinese game companies, including Tencent and NetEase, have high expectations for party games and have invested a lot of resources.
On January 29, 2024, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng made an appearance at Tencent's internal employee conference and annual meeting. When it comes to the gaming business, Ma Huateng said that gaming is the company's flagship business. Currently, Tencent is vigorously promoting the light entertainment social game "Yuanmeng Star" which is still a key investment direction in the future, but it still faces challenges in development.
On March 20th, Tencent Holdings (00700. HK) released a financial report showing that the company's annual revenue was 609 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10%; The net profit of non IFRS for the whole year was 157.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%. Among them, Tencent's online gaming business generated a total annual revenue of 179.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.4%.
NetEase's total revenue in 2023 was 103.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7%, breaking the 100 billion yuan mark for the first time; Under non GAAP, the net profit attributable to the company's shareholders from continuing operations was 32.6 billion yuan, compared to 22.8 billion yuan in the same period of 2023, a year-on-year increase of approximately 43%.
From the perspective of segmented business, NetEase's core business game revenue in 2023 was 81.6 billion yuan, of which net revenue from online games accounted for about 92.9%, and net revenue from mobile games accounted for about 75.2% of net revenue from online games. According to the financial report, this was mainly due to an increase in the proportion of net revenue from mobile games such as "Egg Party" and "Against the Cold Water". Among them, the cumulative number of registered users for Egg Party has reached 500 million.