There are apparently two free-to-play Warzone games in the market right now and both of them were released around the same time. The first is obviously the battle royale phenomenon by publisher Activision. The second though is web-based incremental strategy board game “themed around conquering the world.”
According to a complaint filed by Activision in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the web-based Warzone.com game has threatened the publisher to seek “massive damages” for trademark infringement in addition to restricting the publisher from using the Warzone name or using trademarks in relation to the name.
Activision has hence sued the maker of the incremental strategy board game and wants the Los Angeles federal court to declare Call of Duty: Warzone has an independent intellectual property and which does not infringe any trademarks.
The said web-based game is called Warzone Idle. The game features turn-based gameplay and is heavily inspired by Risk, a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict, and conquest which was released several decades ago.
The indie project is the work of a single individual named Fizzer who claims that “over 10,000 multiplayer games are played every day” across PC and mobile devices. While that may not come close to the metrics generated by Call of Duty: Warzone, it is understandable why Activision wants to settle the issue of trademark infringement before the situation gets out of hands.
Warzone, the latest one, was last confirmed in October 2020 to be catering more than 80 million players worldwide. That active player-base should be nearing the magical 100 million barrier if not already. That being said, there is one advantage which the web-based strategy board game has and that is the absence of online cheaters who continue to plague Verdansk.
While developer Raven Software continues to hand out permanent bans, the most recent one wiping out 15,000 more player accounts, a better anti-cheat to restrict cheaters from even getting into the game would be far more appreciated right now by the Call of Duty community.
Update: Some of the information originally posted was incorrect. The indie game was released in 2008 as WarLight before being renamed to Warzone in 2017. Warzone Idle then arrived in 2020. Apologies for the mistake.
