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Escape From Tarkov rival rejects Battlestate Games’ plagiarism claim

Following accusations of plagiarism from Escape From Tarkov developer Battlestate Games, PCGamesN speaks to the Arena Breakout Infinite dev.

Arena Breakout Infinite dev rejects Escape From Tarkov plagiarism claim - A soldier in an armored helmet.

Tactical FPS game Arena Breakout: Infinite is set to be the latest rival in the hardcore, realistic extraction shooter space. It enters a market where titans including Escape From Tarkov, Gray Zone Warfare, Exfil, Road to Vostok, and even Call of Duty Warzone’s DMZ mode compete for space. However, this newcomer has drawn the attention of EFT’s Battlestate Games, which claims that developer MoreFun Studios has “plagarized” several Tarkov assets.

Public conflict between Battlestate and Arena Breakout: Infinite developer MoreFun Studios began with a simple yet inflammatory post on X (formerly Twitter). “Have a nice 20 minute adventure in the blatant plagiarist game,” Battlestate wrote on Thursday April 25, sharing an image of Arena Breakout: Infinite’s invitation to ex-Tarkov players. “In and out.”

Arena Breakout: Infinite, a new FPS game that has now reached over a million Steam wishlists following a successful beta, has also come under fire from BSG studio head Nikita Buyanov. On Wednesday May 8, Buyanov posted images of videogame code that contained references to a character model with the backend identifier ‘Kojaniy.’

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Kojaniy is the nickname of one of the boss enemies in Escape From Tarkov. While Buyanov did not reference Arena Breakout: Infinite directly, the CEO seemed to imply that the images of the code were sourced from a game that was not Escape From Tarkov, and thus illustrated that the Kojaniy character model and its associated code had been plagiarized and used by another game-maker.

“There is also new information that has not been heard before,” Buyanov wrote. “The name Kojaniy is the nickname of the man who became the prototype of Shturman, from whom the art of this boss was drawn. He even took part in a couple of our early dev broadcasts in 2015 [and] 2016.

“We wanted to keep it quiet but it’s up to you to decide if you would like to support this kind of things [sic] and stick to the games that not only entre [sic] the genre but do not hesitate to copy what has been done.”

On Saturday May 15, Buyanov shared a comparison of two weapon models under the banner “it’s a match.” When asked whether any of the weapon models used in Escape From Tarkov are ready-made assets bought from online stores, Buyanov replied “it’s ours, we do every single weapon in EFT and we have all of the necessary source files for that.”

We asked MoreFun producer Yiming Sun for a response to the remarks made by Battlestate and Buyanov. “We respect the intellectual property rights of others and believe in the importance of IP protection,” he tells us via email interview. “The alleged copyright infringement is untrue. Instead of getting caught up in the noise on social media, our current focus is ensuring the beta continues to run smoothly so that we receive player feedback and deliver the best game we can make.”

PCGamesN has contacted Battlestate Games for a response and will update this story with that or any further details as they come.

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