In the past, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) was one of the most famous mobile MOBA games due to allegations of idea plagiarism. The peak of this came when the game was sued by Tencent – Riot Games in a U.S. court for striking similarities when compared to League of Legends.
At that time, Tencent took 2 years to win the lawsuit, forcing the MLBB publisher to pay $2.9 million (approximately 67 billion VND). However, this compensation is said to be “insignificant” compared to the profits that MLBB earned from the gaming market by “borrowing” ideas from LoL.
Just as the old lawsuit gradually faded from memory, the MLBB publisher sparked controversy again with the launch of a new hero named Valentina – a mage with the ability to “steal” the ultimate abilities of other heroes.
For League of Legends players, it doesn’t take long to recognize the similarity between Valentina and a League champion, Sylas, as both have the ultimate ability to “steal” the ultimate from opponents in the game.
Another comparison made is with Rubick from DOTA, but Valve’s hero possesses a much more powerful “copy ability” mechanism, while Sylas and Valentina are completely similar as they can only steal the opponents’ ultimate abilities.
At this moment, the gaming community (especially LoL players) is quite “fired up” over the blatant plagiarism behavior from MLBB, especially as Riot Games is trying to develop the mobile game Wild Rift. As a result, Valentina has become the “punching bag” for many LoL and Wild Rift players to vent their frustrations.
