Area F2 Terminated Citing “Gameplay Issues”, What’s Next For Ubisoft’s Lawsuit Against Apple And Google?

Cover and thumbnail courtesy Area F2

• Following Ubisoft's lawsuit Area F2 decides to terminate service.
• A statement put out by team says they will be back after a complete overhaul to design.

Following the lawsuit filed by Ubisoft against tech giants Google and Apple according to which "Area F2", created by Alibaba owned Ejoy.com, was a "near carbon copy" of Rainbow Six Siege, and that can't "seriously be disputed", the Area F2 team decided to terminate its service at 12:00 PM on 20 May 2020 (GMT+0).

The team put out a statement thanking players and saying they are carrying out improvements to Area F2 in order to deliver a better playing experience. The reasons the team gave out for rolling the game back was its steep learning curve resulting in many players abandoning the game in less than 30 minutes. They also said they were not willing to deliver a poor playing experience, hence the game required large-scale, in-depth adjustments and a complete overhaul of the design to achieve the mission of bringing CQB to as many players as we can on mobile devices. 

Ubisoft Entertainment had sued Apple and Google over the game, claiming it is a ripoff of Rainbow Six: Siege. Area F2 - Global Launch was listed on Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store by developer Qookka Games, a name Alibaba’s Ejoy.com does business under. It had over 5 million downloads on the Google Play Store. The number of downloads that Area F2 had received since its launch took it to the top 3 of App Store free-to-play game rankings in some regions.

It is unclear what will become of AF2 and how they will overhaul the game to avoid the apparent copyright infringement. As of now, AF2 players will have to look somewhere else for a CQB experience.