Ubisoft sues Apple and Google for selling Alibaba's Area F2 game, which it claims is a “near carbon copy” of Rainbow Six: Siege
Ubisoft Entertainment SA sued Apple Inc. and Google LLC, accusing the companies of selling a ripoff of its popular video game “Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege.”
Context & Ripple Effects
Ubisoft is doing something notable here: instead of only pursuing the cloner, it is suing Apple and Google as the sellers of Alibaba's Area F2, putting the storefronts' curation decisions directly in legal play at a moment when their gatekeeping power is already contested from other directions.
The move lands amid a widening pile of litigation against both stores — Epic's Australian suit over Google's forced payments system being one front — so this case adds intellectual-property liability to the list of pressures on how Apple and Google decide what ships.
First-order effects
- Apple and Google now face a live damages claim tied to a specific listing decision, forcing them to defend not the game but their own review-and-sale of it.
- Alibaba's Area F2 is exposed to removal or delisting pressure on both stores, since continuing to sell it extends the alleged infringement each day.
Second-order effects
- Other cloned-game rights holders get a template for naming the platforms alongside the copycat — Krafton followed it within two years with its PUBG lawsuit against Apple and Google over an allegedly copied game.
- Both stores have an incentive to tighten clone screening before publication, raising rejection rates and friction for developers whose games resemble existing hits.
Third-order effects
- If courts accept that selling a copycat makes the store a liable distributor, app review shifts from quality control to de facto IP policing — a structural change layered onto the antitrust scrutiny both companies already face from complaints like Florian Mueller's rejected-COVID-game filing.
- Platform liability of this kind would concentrate more risk in fewer hands, strengthening the argument of critics like Epic who want distribution opened up beyond the two stores.
The trend: Game publishers are increasingly suing the app stores themselves alongside the cloners, pulling Apple and Google into answering for every title they choose to sell.