CARY – A Korean company that helped turn the online video game battleground format into a worldwide rage is now suing Cary-based Epic Games alleging copyright infringement for its Fortnite.

The news is now just emerging that PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, which is based in Korea, launched the legal action in January.

“We filed the suit to protect our copyright in January,” a company official told the Korea Times.

Fortnite, which can be played for free, recently was approved for release in China where social media and gaming giant Tencent, an investor in Epic, is based. It earned a whopping $296 million during April, research firm Superdata says. Epic sells a variety of accessories for use in the game. That total is up from $223 million in March.

Epic also recently announced plans to offer $100 million in prizes to players, which number millions worldwide.

Interestingly, Epic has been very active in court seeking to protect the game from what it describes as cheating and also leaks of proprietary information.

But Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic and its CEO, says there’s room in the market for similar games and technology.

“You buy one brand of vacuum cleaner, you’re not going to buy another one, because you only need one,” Sweeney told gaming news site MCV. “But with games, if they’re two great games, people will play both.

“I don’t feel like products in the same genre are cut-throat competitors at all, I think they’re very complimentary and the work that we’ve done on Fortnite has benefitted PUBG and a huge array of other games. Namely the optimization that got us to 60fps [60 frames per second] on all console platforms, making the game work on mobile, all the streaming improvements and everything else required to support a game of this scale, it’s benefiting everyone.”

Gaming news site GamingBlot calls the dispute “silly,” noting the history of video game development.

“The games industry grows and propagates because other companies take popular ideas and iterate on them- imagine if id Software had sued first person shooters after DOOM, or Capcom fighters after Street Fighter II, or Nintendo, well, most games after Mario or Zelda on NES and N64<” GamingBolt reports. “Where would the industry be today?”

However, GamingBlog notes that Epic “quickly appropriated the [Korean game’s] mode and put its own spin on it. Smart and savvy decisions, such as making it free to play, and making the game available on all platforms, as well as steady optimization and polish, a great art style, and excellent support for the mode, have led to Fortnite becoming the most popular game in the world- while PUBG is still popular, the crown that could have been its is now with Epic Games and Fortnite.”

PUBG has indeed suffered, points out news site Kotaku:

“The popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has fallen in the wake of Fortnite’s success, with the game’s player count cut by half. Some streamers have also turned their attention to Epic’s game, casting aside PUBG, just as its getting fun again.”

CNBC, meanwhile, notes similarities between the games:

“Fortnite Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds — also known simply as PUBG — do share several similarities. In both games players parachute from a plane and fight to the death, and the playable area of the map starts to shrink towards a random spot where players have to head towards to avoid taking damage.”