Honor of Kings' New '机关百炼' Mode Caught Copy-Pasting Brotato — Players Roast: 'They Didn't Even Plagiarize on Time'

Honor of Kings has been caught red-handed yet again — and this time it's not about hero balance or skin milking. Players on NGA forum dissected the game's brand-new limited-time mode '机关百炼' (Mechanism Alchemy) and came to a consensus: this is basically Brotato on mobile.

[Hands-on combat, screen-clearing kills! New limited-time mode '机关百炼' launches March 14] An NGA user dropped the official Bilibili trailer link and went full detective mode, breaking down every mechanic side-by-side.

The comparison checklist was brutal in its thoroughness: same wave-based timed gameplay, same 6-weapon system with star upgrades, same post-wave shop with 4 purchasable items that can be refreshed and locked, same character stat archetypes (melee, ranged, crit, lifesteal, HP regen, harvest, luck), same unlock progression for new items and characters, same item trade-off mechanic of benefits vs. penalties. The only additions? An in-match equipment layer and a talent tree. In other words: Brotato with a fresh coat of paint and a sprinkle of 'micro-innovation.'

But here's the twist — the comment section didn't erupt into a unanimous 'burn the plagiarists!' mob. Instead, it devolved into a philosophical debate about how the Chinese gaming community applies its 'plagiarism accusation' (煎炒, jiān chǎo) standards differently depending on who's doing the copying.

Some tried to downplay the accusation, arguing that 'the Vampire Survivors-like genre is so oversaturated that this isn't even newsworthy — everyone and their dog has cloned this formula.' But others pushed back hard: 'If you've actually played both, you'd know Vampire Survivors and Brotato play nothing alike beyond the auto-attack-on-move premise. This is clearly a Brotato reskin.' When someone tried the 'well Brotato copied too' defense, they got shut down: 'Brotato never established its own sub-genre — it's still categorized under VS-likes, so your whataboutism doesn't hold up.'

The top-voted comments, however, were refreshingly unhinged in their bluntness. One user nailed it with a single sentence: 'The only real tea here is that they plagiarized late. It's not like this was some technically difficult project to begin with.' Another went with the more concise take: 'This is just Vampire Survivors? King of Glory really has no new ideas left, huh.'

The real showstopper was a comment that elevated the entire thread from petty drama to industry commentary: 'Isn't the bar for plagiarism just whether the core design is identical? It's the same genre — you swap side-scrolling for 3D, guns for magic swords, XP drops for gold drops. Does that make it a different game type? Can we at least apply the same standard to domestic and foreign devs? In China, it's always 'Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo — typical Chinese devs,' but when foreign studios do the same thing, suddenly it's 'their design is different so it doesn't count.' Double standards much?'

Veteran players were predictably nonplussed. One noted that 'another mobile game already launched a VS-like mode ages ago — I even got hooked and bought the real Vampire Survivors on Steam because of it,' highlighting how Chinese publishers have been running the 'clone first, iterate later' playbook for years. The response to that? A beautifully resigned: 'What are you gonna do about it?'

At the end of the day, whether game modes can even BE plagiarized remains Schrödinger's Lawsuit — as long as devs don't patent mechanics and companies never admit to it, players are stuck arguing in forums forever. But for a game of Honor of Kings' stature — the literal king of Chinese mobile gaming — to need to 'borrow' its new ideas from a small indie roguelite? That's just... kinda sad. Not every 'micro-innovation' turns into a 'macro win.'