Source: Moba Legends publisher is an official publisher of MOONTON Games

What looks like a clone of hit MOBA game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has surfaced in India as of Wednesday, April 24th.

“MOBA Legends: 5v5” has just been dropped in the Google Play Store by Vizta Games, its publisher.

A highly-placed source within MOONTON familiar to the matter exclusively told Fragster.com on condition of anonymity that Vizta Games is an “official” publisher of MOONTON, but did not provide additional details so far about the two organizations’ partnerships.

 

The game does not mention the main MLBB or MLBB’s developer, MOONTON Games, but has elements similar to the main MLBB as reported by Esports.net and AFK Gaming.

 

IMAGE COURTESY: Google Play Store via Esports.net

 

The Google Play store screenshots obtained by Esports.net even show Chip, MLBB’s newest hero, being featured in the artwork for Moba Legends. It is unclear if he shares the same name in-game as of the moment.

MLBB’s original title was also “Mobile Legends: 5v5” before it was changed to Mobile Legends: Bang Bang following a copyright suit by Riot Games to MOONTON, which was recently settled.

“Esports.net has downloaded and played the game, which is exactly similar to MLBB,” the news outlet’s report claims. They also noted that screenshots of the game posted on the Google Play Store show the game to be an almost exact copy of the worldwide version of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The game, however, is written in Hindi, one of India’s most popular languages. 

“Thus, this has led to speculation about Moba Legends: 5v5 being a localized version for the Indian market, published by Vizta Games,” Esports.net reported.

The original MLBB was banned in 2020 by Indian government regulators for alleged data privacy concerns. 

Should Moba Legends being an Indian-only version of the game be confirmed officially, this won’t be the first time developers found a way to circumvent Indian government regulations. Kraton, developer of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG Mobile, republished PUBGM in India under the title “Battlegrounds Mobile India” or BGMI.

MOONTON Games has yet to officially comment on the matter.