As IP becomes a trend among game industries, more and more companies are start a dispute for IP.
One of the biggest news is that NCsoft and Netmarble are pressing charges against each others for “ADEN” disrupting the “lineage” IP. Then Kakao and NHN entertainment are also going at it for IP issues.
November 2nd, people of this field have confirmed that NCsoft have attempted to press charges towards ADEN which is under Netmarble for IP related reasons. The reason is because the world and props for ADEN is too similar to “lineage”. A lot of players even agree that the background of Aden World and even many names of props are similar. ITS GAMES responded stating [It is just putting a PC MMORPG game to the mobile version, it is not harming the IP of “lineage”. Coincidentally, ITS GAMES was bought by Netmarble not long ago, yet NCsoft and Netmarble are supposedly partners to create the IP of “LINEAGE 2”.
At the same time, kakao friends have been pushed to the spotlight too. Kakao’s [Friends Popcorn “프렌즈팝콘” for kakao] and NHN entertainment’s [Friends pop “프렌즈팝” for kakao] are too similar, thus was suspected of plagiarism. Not only are the names similar for these 2 games, even the characters and tri gameplay can’t be seen being different. NHN entertainment claims that “Friends pop have been trying very hard the past 1 year and 2 months to work with FRIENDS IP. Unfortunately the 2 games have too similar names and the gameplay is almost identical.”
This is different from the IP dispute LINEAGE has. Both IP of these 2 games belongs to kakao, so it can’t really be a violation of IP. But many players feel that “do you really need to have 2 identical games?” and some event think that FRIENDS POPCORN is a continued work of FRIENDS POP. Kakao participate to create the NHN game. Kakao and NHN entertainment, NCsoft and Netmarble are working partners, yet they are pressing charges against each other and are standing strong with their own opinion. No matter what happens to these companies, we will know after the situation is over.
