The Game That Got Away With Copying League of Legends



Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a MOBA developed and published by Moonton. After launching in 2016, the title became popular in several countries across Asia and started to dominate the mobile market.

Despite their success, Moonton has also been met with criticism for taking a bit too much “inspiration” from League of Legends which eventually resulted in Riot Games and its parent company, Tencent, launching a now-infamous copyright infringement lawsuit.

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45 thoughts on “The Game That Got Away With Copying League of Legends”

  1. Philippines has low internet speed and there is a decent amount of low spec smartphones, other publishers did not adapt to that and that's one of the problem, I hope they optimize wild rift for slow internet speeds and low spec phones

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  2. I'd like to talk about another MOBA that is launching on mobile: Pokemon Unite.

    Some people from the west didn't get why Nintendo dipped their hands on the genre, their POV is too narrow to realize that people in SEA region for example have smartphones instead of having PCs and consoles. People will spend here money to buy smartphones over consoles because it's more practical here to have a multifunctional tool like a phone over a console. Not everyone here can afford a PC right now with the current pricing and economy.

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  3. I think the key point here is potencial. Riot is a juggernaut that could be out to dominate the market just like MLBB has done for a long time… but it has been slower than expected. Many content creators that switched right away to WR because of the foretold wave of players in this new game have now switched back to ML as the views decreased their numbers. Same with players that hoped for a similar casual experience in WR and found a slower, more calculated playstyle. After playing both games and liking them for different reasons, I can only hope for Riot to keep on their investment in the mobile MOBA market and improve their game; more champions, permanent ARAM and more. The buyer always win when companies compete for their attention and it has been long enough for ML to be without a rival (other mobile MOBAs, while good, can just dream of having the same amount of players). This goes beyond the discussion of "was MLBB a copy of LoL?" because everyone knows the answer to that and, thankfully, I can say the game has mostly grown out of that

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  4. MLBB is starting to be more wacky instead of straight-up copying. They try to be more original, but just threw balance off the window. I stopped playing about 2 years ago.

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  5. I've had Mobile Legends for a few years now and I can honestly say that I enjoy the game. It's a copycat of LoL, but it's just too damn fun. Sometimes copying is good. Don'tfix what's not broken.

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  6. As player of both League of Legends and MLBB (MLBB being very casually tho), I think the difference between the two games are quite significant now. I don't believe you can call MLBB a copycat anymore since their gameplay is quite different now.

    There is no denying that MLBB was VERY SIMILAR if not the same in the beginning (I believe, didn't really know about it when it first started), I think MLBB has made changes that makes themselves distinct, from aspects within laning, jungling, objectives, items, and teamfight. Furthermore, new released heroes are nothing like LoL heroes anymore I believe, and I am quite surprised with some of the original mechanic that they have introduced.

    Let's be honest, LoL in the early years feel quite similar to DoTA with how "mana" was a big deal back then, etc. However, now you feel very different gameplay between both games. I think the biggest issue was LoL started as a passion project, while MLBB started as a money maker (and it still is tbh, which is why while I can back MLBB in term of it as a game, I can't support it as a business and haven't pay a cent for the game yet)

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  7. ML is also super unbalanced like the literal turrets could be destroyed in the first six minutes, and don't get me started on the overpriced skins, the highest rarity skins could be worth a whopping ₱5000! (For comparison $1 is like ₱50ish), this might not be that expensive to westerners but this is super expensive for Filipinos ON A SKIN, ONE EFFING SKIN!

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  8. To give you an idea how big it is in South East Asia, League of Legends has an average of 4.2million daily concurrent players world wide, while Mobile Legends averages 7.1million in total. The whole population of Philippines and Indonesia basically plays it.

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  9. Success of mobile legend and freefire in sea market showed that the game quality doesn't matter. For a game with plain ugly graphic, they are able to get attention because they are happened to be viral and have low phone spec requirement for poor users.

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  10. Hmmm…I think Akshon got something wrong with regards to the lawsuit. Riot nor Tencent never sued Montoon as a whole company . The lawsuit that succeeded was the one targetting only the CEO of Moon for Non Compete Agreement and it was not even initiated by Riot, but by it's parent company, Tencent.

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  11. This was my first moba and honestly didn’t know about mobas back then, but I know I got this game since release and it got so popular in the Philippines (still famous today) but now im honestly kinda over mobas but I still remember the memories I made in ML

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  12. I'm not a ml fan but yeah mlbb will remain strong in the market tbh… I play lol on pc but I can't play wr because of its high specs requirements. Riot games need to make the game more playable and accessible to lower specs mobile phones as well… In SEA and SA, people have to pay a large amount of taxes to buy a mobile phone and thus many people can't afford those flagship phones.

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  13. Only optional? Its a lie. Moonton is a liar. If its only optional then why all of mpl teams disband their wr division? Yeah all of em. They're forced to disband. They cant do anything since all of em already paid a lot of money to join mpl.

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  14. Tbh, Wild Rift just isn't very fun.
    I'm I'm gonna play either, it's Mobile Legends.

    On mobile, the more fitting product is the one with shorter average match length, more streamlining (such as NOT needing to recall to base in order to buy items), and more content that's fun for casual play.
    ML does all of us that better than Wild Rift.

    WR just didn't grip me, while I did play ML for a few months and had fun with it.

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  15. "inspired" my ass. They straight up copy and steal dotaallstar forum hero idea.

    Thank god we have icefrog to ensure dota future. F guisoo and pendragon.

    Lolwr dev doest even care about their game. Just look at high elo wintrading. They keep on playing without any action from dev. Lolwr censored too many things that it make it like a kiddy game. The server mixup also a problem for me as i played in sea server yet got a match against or with mainland china vpn user.

    After tiresome month trying to like lolwr(i event spend for skin). I stop playing and get back to mlbb.

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  16. It’s normal for companies in America to screw each other over and sue each other, but the moment a Chinese company tries to do that exact same kind of capitalism it’s a conspiracy.
    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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  17. As a ML player, genuinely think that wild rift will never surpass ML, at least in the SEA region.

    It has nothing to do with gameplay, copycat, etc.

    It is simply the fact that mobile legends is STUPIDLY popular in SEA, especially Indonesia and Philipines.

    At lease in Indonesia, you can go to a random restaurant, covinience store, cafes, or some places where people hangout, and theres always people playing it. And i dont think half of them know that mobile legends is ripping off LoL.

    Also a sidenote, moonton focused heavily on the casual players and accesibility. To the point that the first 5 ranks of the 8 ranks in ranked mode is filled with people who is in csgo, would be comparable to silver rank, they focused on the people who just play to pass time and have fun.

    Even with that, the esports scene in Indo and PH is super big. Even though they are mostly traditional culture countries, pursuing Mobile legends pro player as a job isnt that far fetched and lots of kids at the age of 14 to 16 already signed big contract to teams.

    all in all imo, Mobile legends may lose players in East Asia or the small eu playerbase it has, but i dont think Wild rift is gonna have any impact in SEA, where the majority of the fans and money come from anyway.

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  18. As someone in SEA who plays both Wild Rift and Mobile Legends i tend to go back to mlbb cause I have all the heroes I want. If only Wild Rift has all heroes.

    Most my friends also refuse to move to other mobas due to them needing to unlock heroes. Arena of Valor just died horrible cause they counldnt keep up here. Plus the original League of Legends in SEA is not run by Riot but by a scumbag company called Garena who doesnt price things to be affordable in this region.

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  19. Seeing how evil Riot have become, and how toxic the elitist LoL community in SEA, i doubt Mobile Legends players would switch to Wild Rift.

    Riot should've done this long ago, now it's too late. Maybe other region, Riot.

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  20. I have no sympathy for Riot since they are the one who neglect making Lol mobile in the first place. They only did it now because ML got big, otherwise they will still neglect the market.

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  21. All of the mobile MOBAs look the same. Unless you play them and know each character, they're interchangeable as far as designs go. You have the King Arthur guy, the big breasted sorceress, the purple skinned witch, the vampire, the crazy girl with a giant laser canon, the pirate chick, the ninja, the woman with a spirit she commands, the dude with a giant sword, and the sweet little girl who doesn't look like she belongs on the battlefield. There's many more examples, but you get my point.

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  22. Mobile legend biggest advantage is the size. Because the game size can be considered light compared to other moba game, a lot of people could play it. If league of legend cannot make the mobile version lighter, Indonesia players will mostly will stick with mobile legend

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  23. mobile esports are dumb as hell, but i'd at least like them to be done by a more respectable company like riot. yeah riot isnt exactly respectable but more than this random chinese company

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  24. It's not only in Indonesia, moonton already did that in the Philippines with nexplay esports and among other mobile esports. They're really want to have a strong foothold in SEA but forgetting other regions. For me as a player of both games, I'm happy with it. Competition brings growth and moonton did a ton of changes with how they create heroes which is really refreshing and rito needs to step up their game if they wanna keep and bring back those league players to wildrift

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