THIS IS CURRENT THEFT. Multiple pieces of art in this post are on Moonton’s Facebook currently. Right now. That are copyrighted to other artists.
. . .
(This is gonna be a long post)
So far this video really seems to be the only one covering the actual theft side of things from what I can tell, but the evidence is pretty damning, including statements from the artists who were stolen from. And I don’t mean “stolen from” as in “they loosely inspired stuff from,” no they used the actual artwork in their game.
Moonton seems to have directly stolen artwork from places like DeviantArt and Artstation, used it in their game as hero art, and modeled skins one to one off that artwork which were then sold in Lucky Spins.
One of these artists is a guy named Paul Kwon (“Zeronis”), who is a very well known concept and fan artist. Moonton directly used a piece of his art without his permission or compensation, modeled a skin for Karina off it, sold it in their game for multiple months, then recolored it to “avoid copyright claims” (though didn’t actually change the model itself), continued to sell it, and a version of it seems to have remained in their game for like 5 years before they fully revamped it. Again, he apparently was never commissioned nor compensated for this use of his art. He didn’t even know that this had happened.
His art: OniMiura by Zeronis
ML skin and icon: Here
Recolored version: Here
Another guy is Derrick Song, who has a similar story but his artwork is STILL on ML’s Facebook page to this day. I can’t tell if he responded for comment though in the video because he’s briefly shown while a montage plays of their other stolen art from people like this.
Song’s art: Axe DOTA Fanart
ML’s Facebook: Here
Yea that’s right, artwork that is most likely stolen (which is fan art of DOTA of all things) is STILL on their Facebook. There’s more than just that though. This other post has official art from BLIZZARD on it. STILL. If you overlay Miya’s art to the second image on the Warcraft page, it’s clear that they just directly modified the art.
World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Art (switch to back): Here
ML’s Facebook: Here
There’s so much more art that this video covered that was probably stolen from artists like these.
That’s not the craziest part though, the video also exposed a lot of other actual art theft from other industry giants Tencent (that artwork of Clint, which is also still on their Facebook, is traced/stolen from old HoK art from 2015), DOTA, Dreamworks and so on (yes they actually stole that artwork of Kung Fu Panda for Akai’s old pfp we’ve always memed, that is genuinely official Dreamworks art). Some of this art remained in their game for 5+ years and was visible in multiple major ML tournaments, including the first World Championship where stolen art from DOTA could be seen in gameplay.
Oh and we already sorta knew this, but apparently the entirety of Mobile Legends was (for legal reasons: most likely) built on stolen assets and code from Honor of Kings back in 2016. Like, all of it. The map, the characters, animations, everything. Everything was stolen. The video basically confirms it until Moonton gives their rebuttal.
For anyone who played HoK when it came out globally and went “hey this UI reminds me of old ML,” that’s why. It’s not that HoK was outdated, it’s that ML stole it back in 2016 when HoK first came out in China and covered it up. Tencent has tried to sue Moonton many times over this in China (I’ll make a second post about the lawsuits because according to the video there’s at least EIGHT, not 3-4), but Moonton did a bunch of insane stuff like “publicly accused the judge of being corrupt” to get out of the trials.
There’s so much else that this video covers that I don’t even know how to include in this post, including a lot more current plagiarism/theft all over their social medias and even still in their game, with basically everything still being taken from Honor of Kings, League, and other games like Elden Ring, World of Warcraft and Castlevania.
Have you guys seen this??