Last August, The Walt Disney Corporation and Ravensburger announced Disney Lorcana. It is a collectible card game based on the many iconic characters created by the ubiquitous multimedia company like Mickey Mouse, Ariel, and Aladdin. Ravensburger even revealed official card artwork in February at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, showcasing a brand new distinct art style. But, there is a chance the foundation of this new collectible card game may not be legitimate. Developer Ravensburger is being sued by another studio for allegedly stealing their card game idea and repackaging it as Disney Lorcana.
The Disney Lorcana lawsuit
According to a press release reported by Dicebreaker, the Disney Lorcana lawsuit involves Ravensburger and Upper Deck Entertainment. Upper Deck Entertainment is the studio well known for their deckbuilding game series, Legendary.In the report, Upper Deck is suing Ravensburger and a former Upper Deck employee for allegedly “stealing and copying Upper Deck’s original game, which Ravensburger repackaged and marketed as Lorcana.” Upper Deck claims they had already invested significant time and resources to develop a new and novel trading card game, which was then stolen and repurposed by Ravensburger.
Upper Deck president Jason Masherah said:
We encourage competition in the industry, but also strongly believe in playing by the rules to ensure the gaming community benefits from the different creative choices by each manufacturer.
According to the complaint filed by Upper Deck, the game Ravensburger allegedly stole from was an unreleased game titled Rush of Ikorr. The complaint states that a former employee had spent a year of development on the game then at some point around their termination, ended up working for Ravensburger, who is a direct competitor. The employee then transported their work on Rush of Ikorr to Disney Lorcana which has "remarkable, uncanny similarities." As for the validity of these claims, Restoration Games posted a Twitter thread with some insights regarding breaches of contract and the logistics of filing legal complaints. Ultimately, the thread states that it is too early to know for sure how things will progress, but that there is some validity to these claims.
At time of writing, Ravensburger has not made any official comment regarding these allegations.
