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| Photo from Moonton and Wikipedia Commons |
by Drew Malihan
MANILA - It's time to bury the War Axe and the Hellfire Hatchet.
Los Angeles-based gaming company Riot Games, who developed League of Legends (LoL), and Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. Ltd., the developer of mobile MOBA game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (ML:BB), settled their differences after years of legal action from both sides, Tuesday.
In a brief statement, the Shanghai-based gaming company announced that both parties agreed to rest their cases.
"MOONTON Games and Riot Games have reached a global settlement on their intellectual property disputes," Moonton said in their press statement.
"After several rounds of communication, the two parties officially signed a settlement agreement recently, and Riot Games decided to formally withdraw the related lawsuits," they added.
The years-long standoff between Moonton and Riot started in 2017, a few months after the release of ML:BB, with the latter suing the former for copyright infringement.
The two companies saw each other in courts in the United States, where the Central District Court of California dismissed Riot's case believing it is better to be settled elsewhere, and in China where Tencent - Riot's parent company - won, with Moonton settling for US$ 2.9 million.
Both parties engaged in legal actions once more in 2022, but Moonton got the upper hand after the California court once more ruled that the case should be discussed elsewhere.
Riot Games, founded in 2006, released LoL in 2009, before being acquired by Chinese company Tencent in 2011. Since then, Riot has released other notable titles, including Legends of Runeterra, Valorant, and LoL's mobile counterpart League of Legends: Wild Rift.
Moonton Games, founded in 2015, has released ML:BB in 2016, and since then has found success in Southeast Asian countries, particularly in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
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