Warcraft ‘ripoff’ pulled offline following Blizzard lawsuit

Sina Games took its game Glorious Saga offline following a lawsuit from Blizzard Entertainment that alleged the mobile and browser game is “almost entirely copied from the Warcraft games and related products.”

Blizzard filed the lawsuit on Aug. 16 in a California court, seeking an order for Sina Games to cease its infringement. The company is also asking for “$150,000 per infringed work” for the “serious and irreparable harm to Blizzard and its business.” On Aug. 29, the Glorious Saga operations team posted an update to the game’s official Facebook page to notify fans that the servers are going offline.

“But due to some irresistible reasons, we decided to announce that the game will stop operating at 6:00 on 29th of Aug. (EDT), and all the servers will be closed,” Sina Games wrote. “Players can’t login any longer.”

The statement posted to Facebook did not mention Blizzard’s lawsuit. Polygon was able to download Glorious Saga under the name Glorious World on the Google Play store, but received multiple errors when trying to open the game. The game is also no longer playable on browser game website Instant Funs, where it was previously available.

Sina Games is a Chinese game company that operates under Sina Corp. Blizzard said in its lawsuit that the company frequently bases its mobile and browser games off popular franchises, including Pokémon and Warcraft. Glorious Saga, a free-to-play game, was previously available on mobile and in browsers; it was described by the developer as a “real time strategy game for building an empire.” Blizzard alleged that Sina Games have “profited handsomely” from the game due to its characters’ likeness to Warcraft characters. Not only does Glorious Saga appear to pull imagery from Warcraft, but Blizzard said some character names, like Jaina Proudmoore, Gul’dan, and Malfurion, are egregiously used in the game.

Polygon has reached out to the Glorious Saga team to confirm it was taken down due to the lawsuit.