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Tencent Has Won a Lawsuit Against Hero Entertainment for Copying CrossFire's Game Maps

The first effective court judgment about game map plagiarism in China
By Julius Chen
Dec. 7, 2021 updated 03:07

On Dec 6th, The High People's Court of Guangdong Province released their final judgment on a lawsuit between Tencent and Hero Entertainment.

In 2017, Tencent accused Crisis Action of using maps that violated the copyright of six game maps of CrossFire, of which Tencent holds exclusive operation rights, in Mainland China. Crisis Action is a mobile FPS game that was launched in 2013, while Hero Entertainment and its sub-company are the developer and publisher of Crisis Action.

Map comparison: CrossFire (up) and Crisis Action (down)Map comparison: CrossFire (up) and Crisis Action (down)

The Intermediate People's Court of Shenzhen City of Guangdong Province ruled in favor of Tencent and their verdict in 2019 stated that Hero Entertainment should compensate Tencent for the economic loss of 45 million CNY (approximately 7.07 million USD). 

Following that verdict, Hero Entertainment appealed to The High People's Court of Guangdong Province. This month, the final adjudication has been made.

In the final judgment, the court held that for shooting games, the spatial layout structure of the game map under the skin of arts is the key and core expression of game creation, and should be recognized as a graphic work of Tencent. The court identified four of the six game maps as constituting infringement, while there were more differences than similarities in the other two game maps. 

Hero Entertainment was ordered to pay more than 25 million CNY (approximately 3.92 million US dollars) to Tencent. The amount of compensation was calculated by multiplying the contribution ratio of game maps, the usage ratio of four infringement maps in all maps, and Crisis Action's net profit of 572 million yuan between the public beta in 2015 and the lawsuit in May 2017. 

Of note, this is the first effective court judgment about game map plagiarism in China.