Suggesting that a Chinese company is trying to replicate the success of its major Western competitors by creating its own version of a product is a timeless statement that requires no context. This isn’t uncommon in the world of video games – for example, there’s a very high-profile case regarding Strike Force and Chinese clones, as well as more recently Hearthstone, Palworld, and Valorant. Yes, this trend have I’ve become a bit cheeky lately.
Tencent is a Chinese conglomerate that already has a presence in many Western markets and is widely regarded as one of the largest technology companies and game publishers in China and the world. The company has poured more and more money into Western teams in recent years.
It seems like a smart strategy, although it apparently hasn’t stopped the Chinese financial giant from cultivating its own team in China to develop legitimately different versions of the West’s most popular games.
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In most industries, this would be an outright accusation, but gaming is a little different. Everyone knows that a genre isn’t really born until someone copies something popular, improvises on it, and becomes popular. Roguelikes, Soulslikes, Metroidvanias, Bullet Heavens (or: Survivors-like) are all good examples. But there has always been an unwritten rule that plagiarism is not allowed all Homework sheet.
I would like to highlight two games that Tencent is responsible for here. Delta Force: Operation Eagle, and Arena Breakout: Infinite. The first game at least had the legendary IP, but when you see it in action, it feels like a carbon copy of Battlefield’s multiplayer. More specifically, it takes some cues from Battlefield 2042.
There’s an emphasis on destruction on the maps, and they look like they’re inspired by some of the most iconic and recognizable entries in the Battlefield series. Its character roster is not unlike BF2042’s terrifying heroes. And, just like them, they also have unique gadgets and passive abilities. Even its evacuation mode seems to be inspired by BF2042’s ill-fated Danger Zone.
The only real difference is the Black Hawk Down-inspired event, which also doubles as a technology showcase.
As a long-time Battlefield fan, I’m mostly happy with it all. I’m not excited about Hawk Ops’ decision to remake Battlefield 2042 instead of Battlefield 3 or Battlefield 4, but any series fan worth their salt knows that Battlefield needs some serious competition.
This is especially true when you consider that core parts of the series are either poorly reproduced by other shooters or avoided entirely. But my problem is that while some of Hawk Ops’ soldier abilities are not replicas of BF2042, they seem to be identical. Maybe my opinion will change when I get my hands on it, but right now it seems like the developers are artificially limiting themselves to what already exists.
Arena Breakout Infinite is the more curious, and certainly more cheeky, of the two. It’s a product of Tencent-owned Morefun Studios, and the team doesn’t appear to have any experience with shooters. It may have an indescribable generic name, but it’s Tencent’s take on Escape from Tarkov.
Tarkov remains the premier extraction shooter, practically giving birth to the subgenre. People are constantly trying to recreate its formula, and while some games are more successful than others, nothing can compare to it.
Breakthrough is the closest, well, entertainment Tarkov – except it’s free to play. Gameplay-wise, it attempts to polish some of Tarkov’s roughest edges by limiting the fear of losing gear in a botched raid and allowing for some persistence between raids.
It’s hard to tell the difference between Breakout and Tarkov when you see it in action. This covers everything from visual quality, color palette, weapon and character animations, to the way the game handles weapon sights and cameras – it’s all a little too close. So close, in fact, that Tarkov developers directly accused MoreFun of stealing their code.
Equally curious are those studio names, which really seem to exist only as an extra layer of confusion. It’s clear that anti-China sentiment is rising in the West, especially in social media and technology. It’s no exaggeration to say that Tencent doesn’t want its well-known name to be associated with every game it makes. This may also be part of the original intention of creating sub-tags like Level Infinite; if you look you’ll know they are Tencent-backed, but most people don’t.
But one thing Tencent can’t seem to overcome is its insistence on making its games available on mobile devices alongside PCs and consoles. I don’t think I have to explain why this limits everything from the mechanical depth to the visual quality of these games.
Although Arena Breakout: Infinite itself is not Technically It’s available on mobile, and it evolved from the mobile game Arena Breakout, which really felt like an expanded version of Tarkov on mobile. However, Hawk Ops will be available on all platforms – assuming all platforms are able to play together.
I understand how big the mobile audience is, and how lucrative it is for Tencent specifically (especially when you consider the walled garden of Chinese gaming), but it also incentivizes it to make safe games that need to entertain a broad range of players. As lightly spruced-up clones, these games have been diluted, and the necessity of mobile versions robs them of any advantage they might have had had they focused on their respective niches.
Only time will tell each game’s staying power, but right now, they look like games that want to be successful everywhere and for everyone, a formula that rarely results in fun games.
