The Chinese publisher NetEase is planning a new shooter for iOS and Android with Project M. The game is supposed to be a team shooter with heroes and abilities, which already conceptually reminds one of Valorant. However, the first trailer looks more like the game has been shamelessly copied.
What is Project M? Project M comes from the Chinese publisher NetEase and is intended to be a tactical 5vs5 hero shooter. In the first trailer, one can see various heroes with unique abilities that take each other out on futuristic maps and make quite a ruckus.
What does Project M remind you of? The entire gameplay, the heroes, the maps, as well as the visuals strongly remind one of Valorant by Riot Games. In the trailer, one can see various things that seem to resemble elements in Valorant:
- A map with Asian architecture
- The visuals of the corridors
- The weapons and their sounds
- The font and its presentation
Moreover, some of the heroes look very similar. One sees a clear counterpart to the bomb expert Raze (here with helmet) and the archer Sova seems to be a woman here. Also the ominous Omen, whose hooded robe probably also envelops a female silhouette. Additionally, you can see foggy spheres for cover and an ice wall can also be summoned.
“When you copy the homework and the teacher notices”
How is the game received by the community? Among the comments on the trailer, many viewers agree that this is a brazen clone of Valorant or its planned mobile version. Of course, there is no evidence for this, but the similarities are striking.
Many angry fans of Valorant have rated the trailer poorly, resulting in 1.7k downvotes, with only 905 upvotes (as of August 7, 2021).
In the comments, players wrote among other things:
- Karlson Chee: “They didn’t even try to change it. They just copied Valorant. The same abilities, same weapon concepts, same sound effects, etc.”
- Chharithy Chea: “Did they seriously do Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V?”
- James Vinluan: “When you copy the homework and the teacher notices.”
- Wick3d Spookii: “Fun Fact: The ‘M’ stands for massive lawsuit.”
- Sebastian Rivera: “If Riot makes Valorant Mobile, it will kill this game. Just like Wildrift is slowly killing Mobile Legends.”
The last comment refers to the planned mobile version of Valorant. It is currently in development, and at least in LoL, the mobile MOBA market was only dominated by Asian games until Riot finally released its own game Wildrift.
