Knives Out is a free-to-play, multiplayer online battle royale game developed and published by NetEase Games. It claims to have more than 150 million players registered worldwide.[2] As of May 30, 2018, the game was released on Steam. Unlike the free non-Steam version, however, the game was released with a price tag, offering “special gifts” with the purchase. The game was later taken down from Steam by June 13, 2018, and reinstated by June 28, 2018
the standard form of the battle royale genre, where players fight to be the last person (or team) alive. Players can choose to enter the match in different modes: Solo, Duo, Squad (four players), or a Fireteam (five players). In either case, the last person or team left alive wins the match. There are two playable maps in the game: Ghillie Island (120 players, 4.8km×4.8km) and Fearless Fiord (300 players, 8km×8km). There are also different game modes such as the Gold Mode, in which the player can earn gold, or the Diamond Mode in which players may earn diamonds throughout the match. The introduction of the Fearless Fiord game map introduces a new type of match, the Blitzkrieg, in which players will land only on a certain part of the map equipped with a pistol, a backpack and basic armor. Blitzkrieg is meant to make players clash head-on.
The round starts with all players contained in one location on an island. When the countdown finishes, players will parachute from a plane onto an island, with procedurally distributed items such as weapons, armors and medical kits available to be looted, and vehicles to be ridden. Players can
Prior to the release of their mobile versions, PUBG Corporation initiated a legal action in the Northern District Court of California against NetEase Games in January 2018, claiming that their mobile games Rules of Survival and Knives Out infringe PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘s copyrights. PUBG Corporation’s lawsuit asserts that Rules of Survival is “a copyrightable audio-visual work, individually and/or in combination with other elements of Battlegrounds“, and identified several elements that appear similar in both games. While many of these elements are common features of a battle royale game, PUBG Corporation claims that there are specific elements from Battlegrounds that copied, such as references
