Moonton, formerly YoungJoy Technology Pte. Ltd., then Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. Ltd. is a Chinese video game developer and publisher based in Shanghai, China. Founded in April 2014, the company is best known for its mobile multiplayer online battle arena game , released in July 2016.
History
Moonton was established in April 2014 within the Minhang District of Shanghai, China. Its two co-founders are Justin Yuan and Watson Xu Zhenhua, who also became partner chief executive officers of the company. On April 6, 2015, the company released its first video game, the tower defense game titled Magic Rush: Heroes. After Moonton's staff of 20 finished developing its first game called Magic Rush: Heroes, released in 2015 to commercial success, they proceeded with developing the company's next project, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena game later titled Mobile Legends. The staff's experience with engineering Magic Rush for a global market, such as in customizing its features for the differing cultures and state of telecommunications of various countries, became beneficial for them to more effectively design Mobile Legends as an appealing game for global players. Mobile Legends was released by Moonton with the subtitle "5v5 MOBA" on 14 July 2016. The game became highly popular in Southeast Asia, notably in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, where it was the most-downloaded free mobile game app among iPhone users in 2017. The game is distributed by Elex Tech in the United States. After the game's initial release, Riot Games suspected that the game was imitating the intellectual property ofLeague of Legends, and contacted Google to remove the game from Google Play and App Store. Moonton removed the game before Google could take it down, and eventually relaunching it with the altered name Mobile Legends: Bang Bang on 9 November 2016. In July 2017, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Moonton because of copyright infringement, citing similarities between Mobile Legends and League of Legends. The case was initially dismissed in Central District Court of California in United States on account of forum non conveniens. Tencent, Riot's parent company, on behalf of Riot Games, filed a new, separate lawsuit directly targeting Moonton's CEO, Watson Xu Zhenhua in Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People’s Court, which ruled in Tencent's favor in July 2018, awarded Tencent a settlement of .
