Last week, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp. launched a potentially industry-shaking lawsuit against NetEase , Resumesarea.Com the creator of several battle royale mobile clones. The company accused NetEase, the Chinese publisher behind battle royale games such as Rules of Survival and Knives Out , of violating copyright and trademarks it holds PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds .
While the lawsuit is one to watch given that it could have significant implications regarding other PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds clones, this isn’t the only reason why people are talking about it. In an excerpt of the lawsuit, PUBG Corp. also admits that the game’s cosmetics affect gameplay. The quote from the developer reads:
“Clothing does affect gameplay in terms of camouflage. Clothing can be used to assist the player to blend in with the environment, making the player less visually detectable. In particular, Battlegrounds includes a Ghillie suit, a full body suit covered with camouflaging material typically used by snipers. The Ghillie suit allows the player to become nearly visually invisible depending upon the terrain.”
The developer goes on to note that in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds , players must “visually detect” other players because of the lack of player indicators seen in other shooter games. PUBG Corp. is using this particular section of the lawsuit to assert that games like Rules of Survival have also ripped off the style of cosmetics offered by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds . These cosmetic similarities, the developer appears to suggest, should be taken seriously because they actively impact the core, PUBG gameplay experience. It also argues that the visual design of these cosmetics is a “protectable” work.
As people have been quick to note, the Ghillie suit is available to all PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players for free. Many players also rush to find it in pockets of loot across the map because of its effectiveness and so the suggestion that the Ghillie suit is a useful cosmetic is not necessarily news. But this section of the lawsuit does raise a larger question about how cosmetic loot can affect gameplay even if it doesn’t provide any discernible buffs to attributes and stats.
Since PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds does sell loot crates – with some players also willing to pay excessive amounts of money for in-game cosmetics – some will also wonder whether PUBG deserves to be included in the pay-to-win debate.
For the past six months many gamers have been discussing pay-to-win loot boxes in games such as Star Wars Battlefront 2 , a title which removed gameplay buffs from purchasable loot boxes due to backlash. Many have also called for games to only offer cosmetic loot which only changes a character’s appearance rather than their ability to do something in a game so that those with more money to burn do not have an unfair advantage.
However, as PUBG Corp’s comments about the Ghillie suit note, certain cosmetics can be used to benefit players, by camouflaging them in certain areas of a map . PUBG Corp. may have only identified the Ghillie suit as a beneficial piece of loot, but what of the other cosmetic content that players can collect in paid-for crates?
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available now on PC, through early access on Xbox One, and on Android and iOS mobile devices.
Source: Newsweek
