Wargaming Suing Company Comprised Of Former World Of Tanks Blitz Developers

Wargaming is suing a company primarily comprised of its former employees. Belarus-based game developer BlitzTeam stands accused of selecting its name "deliberately, in bad faith, and for the sole purpose of taking unfair advantage of the reputation and goodwill of Wargaming's well-known Blitz trademarks," according to the lawsuit.

BlitzTeam was founded in April 2018 by a former team from Wargaming, which received $10 million, including a share of the revenue from World of Tanks: Blitz. The group was known internally as the "Blitz Team" and "began soliciting Wargaming's employees to join the new video game company that became Blitz Team LLC while they were still employed by Wargaming," in apparent violation of an agreement between the two entities.

It's not the first time Wargaming has sought legal action against BlitzTeam. A suit filed in December accused BlitzTeam of appropriating its DAVA Framework/DAVA Engine for use in its own games, which BlitzTeam claimed was distributed under an open-source license, while Wargaming stated that the software was no longer open source after it was modified by the company in 2014. Wargaming sought $1.69 million in damages in the suit.