A Chinese developer has straight up lifted all the assets from Blizzard's Overwatch and remade the game under the title League of Titans. The game is currently seeking funding and there's even a demo available alongside a gameplay video.
As you can see in the video above from Bilibili, it's literally a straight lift from Overwatch. League of Titans has copied over characters like Widowmaker (who wasn't even altered other than having a forearm tattoo textured on) and Pharah, along with Bastion and Reinhardt. They did make some slight tweaks to the characters Tracer and Reaper, the former of which received some slight mesh alterations and some wacky, over-the-top texture replacements. Reaper also underwent some virtual surgery, getting a suit and tie getup and some modified shotgun pistols.
The changes to the characters, however, are minimal. Most of them are easily recognizable and even more-so due to the fact that the gameplay is a complete rip-off from Overwatch. The main difference is that the coding is nowhere near as tight as Blizzard, so there's a lot of janky animations, poorly implemented effects, some of the hit detection is off and the gameplay is overall unpolished.
According to industry analyst ZhugeEX, the game is still heavy in development by a small start-up in China. They're only about 40% done with the game and they're seeking $2 million in funding to get it finished. ZhugeEX also points out that in his investigation into this Overwatch rip-off, the final version of League of Titans won't use Blizzard's assets.
The thing is, they've already heavily modified some of the assets from Overwatch. Would they really scrap the work they've already done and start from scratch? It seems like a huge waste if they were to go that route.
Nevertheless, some individuals questioned how they would be allowed to even rip off of Blizzard without fear of reprisal? Well, it's a different country and Blizzard would have to wrangle with the Chinese copyright division to make something come of it. And that brings us to the next point: a lot of people are wondering why China doesn't have copyright laws? Well, actually they do.
It turns out that according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China has had copyright laws and infringement statures put into place since 1990. They even recently amended the laws as of 2010 to bring China up to date regarding changes in today's digital age. The thing is, China has a habit of not really enforcing those laws, creating a rather difficult situation where companies can do exactly what this developer is doing with Overwatch: taking the assets and making it for their own game.
This is actually nothing new when it comes to China. They have many properties that are direct rip-offs of other products made by companies from the around the world. The only question left to be asked is if the developers will actually be able to secure funding and finish their Overwatch clone?
