Falling Into Your Smile Continued to be Dogged by Talks of Plagiarism in the E-Sports World

Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao’s new e-sports drama Falling Into Your Smile 你微笑时很美 just dropped a brand new trailer this week. And what’s even better? The show upping the ante a little bit by also releasing a super cute behind the scenes clip of Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao filming a kissing scene! By the way is it the “in” thing now to drop BTS clips of kissing scenes? But all in all, that sounds like quite a little collection of easter eggs to pull in the viewers right?

Unfortunately, despite production busting out the big guns to build the public’s anticipation for the drama, the buzz surrounding the show continues to lean towards the negative. Why even the pull of both stars wasn’t enough to dispel the negative buzz swirling around it.

Controversies

Falling Into Your Smile is actually adapted from the e-sports themed novel written by author Qing Mei 青浼. It was later hit with allegations of plagiarism after readers found a lot of similar elements between her work with content written by another blogger. Netizens also observed that some of the characters and plot are based on real people in League of Legends Pro League (LPL) with many overlapping elements integrated into the work of fiction. The romance, in particular, is allegedly based on the story of e-sports player Gao “WeiXiao” Xuecheng of Team WE and his then girlfriend League of Legends caster Su Xiaoyan. The drama’s title which translates to “You Are Beautiful When You Smile” is also allegedly taken from WeiXiao’s old ID 你微笑时好美. Moreover, Qing Mei also alienated a lot of fans supporting Team WE after supposedly mocking them with derogatory words.

That’s not even the end of the plagiarism allegations the show is facing. E-Sports fans have also pointed out that the team ZGDX logo shown in the drama’s trailer looks similar to another logo. Responding to the accusations, the drama’s team said they’ve already gotten in touch with the art concept team who upon reviewing the creative process said any similarities to other logos was an accident. They (the art concept team) also promised to strengthen further their review processes to ensure this won’t happen again.

In the same post, the producer of Falling Into Your Smile also offered an apology saying “We have always been committed to creating a good creative environment, encouraging originality, paying attention to copyright, and will voluntarily assume all legal responsibilities if plagiarism occurs since we will never tolerate it.” He also encouraged everyone to give the drama a chance and asked everyone to discuss things rationally.

Cheng Xiao seemingly addresses the issue when she shared the trailer on Weibo with the caption, “I don’t regret and I’m not afraid.” While there are those who express support for the drama, her post also drew criticism over plagiarism allegations.

Yu Zheng Also Weighs In

Meanwhile, rumors that allegedly paint Xu Kai to be a school bully have also cropped up online. Xu Kai’s boss Yu Zheng issued a strongly-worded warning to the rumour-mongers as he explains having encountered about one to two hundred slanderers in the past few years. With compensation amounting between RMB 50k-100k yuan, Yu Zheng forgave the offenders after they’ve apologized as they were mostly students. However, he maintains that he won’t ever let things slide any longer. He says, “I don’t care about myself, but my artist is my family and slander is absolutely not allowed. The evidence has been collected, it is useless to delete Weibo.” Yu Zheng also said that apologies will no longer have any bearing because they will have to pay the price. Finally, he adds, “Simply signed on for an e-sports drama, if you don’t like it, then don’t watch it, is there a need to spread rumors? He was only 5 years old in 2000. Hope the rumor mongers can be a little smarter, slandering a 5-year-old kid of school violence +XD… I will sue you one by one and pin you on my Weibo homepage, forever!”

Source: 1 2