Area F2, the recent Rainbow Six Siege mobile clone is now shutting down. According to the official announcement, the service will terminate on 20 May 2020. This comes after Ubisoft began taking legal action against Alibaba over a direct clone copy of its popular online shooter. Area F2 was almost a direct copy-and-paste of Rainbow Six Siege for mobile featuring identical characters, combat and game modes.
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Interestingly, the announcement of Area F2 closing does not mention the recent lawsuit. Instead, the developers blame the game’s steep learning curve and gameplay issues. According to the official announcement, the game’s issues would not be repairable without large-scale, in-depth adjustments. As a result, the developers decided to shut down the project.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The steep learning curve resulted in many players abandoning the game in less than 30 minutes, and the reasons given include not knowing what to do, not knowing where the targets or their teammates are, and dying without seeing the enemy or knowing what killed them.
As game developers, we are not willing to accept an experience that we cannot deliver smoothly to as many players as we can. It is our responsibility to solve this issue, and extensive discussion has shown that this is an issue that requires large-scale, in-depth adjustments, perhaps even a complete overhaul of the design to achieve the mission of bringing CQB to as many players as we can on mobile devices. We have therefore made the difficult decision of terminating the operation of Area F2 in its current form to focus on making further improvements.[/perfectpullquote]
Last week, Ubisoft filed a lawsuit against Alibaba, Apple, and Google. The discovery of Area F2 and its blatant copying of Rainbow Six Siege forced the developer to take legal action in order to protect its property. It is just sad that the developer did not acknowledge the infringement.
Players who spent money on Area F2 in-game purchases are able to request refunds after the game terminates later today. In addition, iOS players may have an easier time getting their money back compared to Android users. Google’s in-game purchases policies are a little problematic.
