Area F2 has shuttered its servers at least temporarily to make “large-scale, in-depth adjustments.”
Earlier this month, Ubisoft filed a lawsuit against Google and Apple over the distribution of Area F2. The mobile game, which was found on the Google Play and the App Store, was a near carbon-copy of Ubi’s Rainbow Six: Siege. In a recent development, though, it’s looking like the app has gone offline after remaining active during this time.
Revealed in a post on the official website, the app has gone offline since Wednesday. Their reason behind shutting down the app isn’t based on them infringing on Ubi’s copyright. Instead, their reason is to make “large-scale, in-depth adjustments” to improve the game for everyone. This is clearly them avoiding mentioning any sort of lawsuit. This method of deflection of pinning it on updates was clearly on purpose, according to Michigan-based lawyer, Richard Hoeg, in a statement to Game Daily.
“In this case, there’s no real reason to mention the lawsuit because anyone that wants to know about that already does, and because you want to be careful not to admit to any wrongdoing as you take this action that looks, for all the world, like you did something wrong.”
In case you’re out of the loop, Area F2 is an FPS mobile title developed by Alibaba-owned Ejoy. The finished product, which appeared in the top three of the free-to-play game section in some regions’ App Store, was eerily similar to that of Ubisoft’s FPS of their own.
It’s clear what the developer plans on doing is more or less altering a bit of code here and there to make it less like the game they were infringing the copyright of.
Is this a surprise? Not really.
The game is a fairly popular one, especially in its home country of China. Area F2 may very well be too valuable to the gaming arm of Alibaba to lose. So, with a hard decision, they opted to shutter the game temporarily so that they could likely alter the game enough to be unique in its own right.
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If you were one of the people who spent money on its microtransactions, you can apply for a refund through the app store or service provider you used.
It isn’t clear how they plan on doing this, but we can probably expect this game to be coming back in the future with a fresh coat of paint, hopefully, not stolen from Ubisoft this time.
What do you think? Were you playing Area F2 before the suit? Tell us below!
