On July 1st, China Indie Game developer DarkSun studio posted on Weibo questioning why their game mechanics are copied by NetEase in the 2.0 Update of Marvel Duel.[1]
Marvel Duel is a mobile collectible card game developed and published by NetEase in collaboration with Marvel Entertainment.
It started earlier that day when some players shared some screenshots on Tieba, an online community similar to Reddit, and claimed they had accidentally access to the up-to-come 2.0 version of Marvel Duel. And it brought lively discussion among the players in no time.
The screenshot shows the player posted on Tieba about what they found in the new version.
Surprisingly, the new version has many differences from the current version in both card mechanics and battle performances.
The battle screen of the current version
The battle screen of the new version
At first, players were worried that might cause the cards they collected useless in this new version. When someone compared the card mechanics with other card games, they found many cards have the same mechanics and value as the cards in Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game, an indie card game just finished a beta test 2 days ago. Later on, Chinese video game media GamerSky posted a news article comparing the similarities.
One of the comparison pictures made by DarkSun Studio shows Marvel Duel’s new version that has completely copied many cards from their game.
The battle screen of Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game
DarkSun studio, the developer of the Yi Xian noticed the news and posted a Weibo saying “I hope it is not real, but it seems to be. It is such an ‘honor’ that we can become an ‘after-dinner topic’ along with the industry tycoon. We will gather more evidence and let more players know the truth.” and “We just hope in the future, there won’t be players talking like ‘Hey! your game is just a copy of Marvel Duel!’.”.Gamera Game, the publisher of Yi Xian, commented “Shame on you. @NetEase @MarvelDuel”.
At this moment, there is no response from NetEase or the team of Marvel Duel yet. But we noticed the previous Weibo and news article of GamerSky has been deleted.
Source: Weibo