Armored Warfare is now in Russian hands

Developers and publishers clashing over what a game is supposed to be. A redditor and consultant burries it all in salt.

I remember overhearing friends talking about Armored Warfare and a heated discussion about whether it was a World of Tanks clone or not. Another question was if enough of it is different to justify its existence even if it was just a WoT clone. Turns out that it was and that the cloning was intentional. This wouldn't be too strange if the hands on the project weren't Obsidian Entertainment's, who usually work on an entirely different sort of game with an entirely different approach to design.

The game's publisher, My.com issued a over the weekend very diplomatically phrasing the fact that they kicked Obsidian off of the project. A story very much contradicting the official and marketing friendly statement by My.com (owned by MailRU) surfaced on , courtesy of a consultant on the project.

YouTube Armored Warfare - Very similar yet legally distinct tank garage

"In order to understand everything that's happened, we need a history of Armored Warfare's development. It all started out with MailRU submitting bids to multiple companies to see who would be able to develop a tank game for them. Obsidian, short on cash and in need of a new challenge, took them up on it. They developed this magnificent plan for Armored Warfare– what could have been is not at all what we have today. In fact, I'm not even sure if you would have been able to call it a World of Tanks competitor as the games only had tanks in common. So, what happened to that? It's simple. MailRU said they wanted none of that, and they tasked Obsidian with making a "World of Tanks clone." Yes, it was supposed to be as close to World of Tanks as they could get with modern tanks and without getting their asses sued off by Wargaming", the consultant explains and I strongly suggest you read the entirety of his post for a glimpse of what developer/publisher relations look like at their nastiest.

It appears that Obsidian was not interested in the business of ripping-off games, while all MailRU wanted was a legally-distinct WoT clone for the Russian market. The first signs of trouble were in December last year, when Obsidian started laying-off people working on the project. The two companies have now officially parted ways.

YouTube Armored Warfare - Very similar yet legally distinct first person gameplay

YouTube Armored Warfare - Very similar yet legally distinct base capturing