UK developer trio accused of game plagiarism A former pub landlord and two chums who together created a computer game and signed a big distribution deal with a major US games supplier have been accused of ripping off other titles' content. Back in May, local newspaper the Kent Messenger interviewed Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis, all from Maidstone, Kent …
It's almost as though the publishers had no knowledge of some of the most successful games of recent times or never even bothered to look at the game they were publishing.
It almost seems as though the developers had no knowledge of copyright law.
It's almost so ridiculous that they could try and claim it was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the lack of respect people have for the hard work of others.
So they stripped out the maps and textures from Oblivion, UT2004, and some other games, and thought that NOBODY would realise if they made a P&C game out of them?
Saying that, though, I do remember seeing a shoddy rip-off of Terminator a while ago, to the point that you can actually see Arnold Schwarzenegger firing the minigun from Cyberdyne's office building window.
Swings and roundabouts...
I mean, there is homaging a game [think the doomguy on a spike in Duke Nukem 3D] and there is just taking the piss.
I'd love to see the full list of rip offs in this, and the reason for them being there - was it a bad attempt to homage various games, or just plain lazy design?
Steven R
This is just mind-boggling. Almost everything is a screenshot from another game; only a few have been photoshopped up, and even that is just a copy/paste job. I wouldn't be surprised if every image is taken from somewhere else. At least it shows that they like playing other people's games.
"Between the three of us we researched, wrote, designed, animated, scripted and developed the whole game from home,"
Sadly, that's probably true; they don't mention the non-animated graphics. It might have been a decent game, if only they'd had a decent artist.
Amazing.. simply amazing. Before I saw the pics, I figured like a texture or two might have been "borrowed" and someone was making a stink over it. (Last time I read about this, it turned out nothing bad had happened -- both games had used a few textures out of some generic pile-o-textures). But.. these shots look identical.
For a point-n-click style game, you would think they would draw up some unique art, it shouldn't be as difficult as making up a bunch of 3D models etc. after all. If they can't draw, then hire someone who can, or do it all sketchy like a few of the Nintendo games and whatever you do, don't admit it's because you can't draw, say it's to make some artistic statement (heh).
As if there's a single game on the market these days that doesn't do exactly that - rip off not only the content ('please kill 5 wolves and return to Lothar-The-Scared-Of-Wolves for your reward'), but the very look and feel of whatever the current best seller is in the same genre. Original ideas these days appear to be doing a slight modification in the way you kill someone in the latest WoW clone (which itself merely lifted the best ideas from previously successful MMOs, bundled them together and presented them in the form of cutesy cartoons).
Every original idea that's ever proven to be popular has been ripped off by every game house past and present. And the few genuine talents when it comes to creativity in game design have always found it almost impossible to get significant backing from any major publisher until they've proved not just once, but many times, that their ideas sell.
Otherwise publishers are interested in nothing but re-hashes and ripoffs. I find it laughable that any one of these games houses has the balls to claim that anything they've produced actually qualifies as intellectual property.
Look, almost every game written is pretty similar. Get weapon, use on enemy, make points, discover treasure, find goal, live happily ever after. Yes, these guys just took some screen shots and fit them into the mold.
The whole process (stealing stuff) has been going on in media for a LONG long time. See:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000417/trivia
Anyone seen the box art on amazon? Had me in stitches of laughter. Reminds me of the cover art for the chinese clone of harry potter.
You would really hope that someone would have noticed something as unbelievably blatant as this.
I wont spoil the surprise:
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/fb/16/326ac060ada038b2abf7a110.L.jpg
To a point I agree with you there, as the vast majority of games are very similar yet slightly different variations around the same themes. However, take Oblivion for example - yes it's an RPG, (which you could argue are all various ripoffs of one or the other, however if you did that then there'd be about 12 games on the market). However, there are thousands of hours which have gone into developing beautiful landscapes, buildings, characters and stories, which sets it significantly apart from "another" RPG.
Of course there are a lot of similarities between games in the same genre but you would also have to agree that once in a while something quite special comes along. For example Half-life, which took FPS games from being a simple point and shoot to having puzzles and an almost creative storyline.
This incidence is entirely different though. They have taken what is probably the easiest thing to compare for similarities and then just outright copied it. It's not even like they stole the graphics engine and moved stuff around, but literally took screenshots of other games and used them in their own (at least that's how it appears). This is more than just a passing similarity in genre, more like blatent plagiarism.
It is one thing to borrow ideas for quests and plots but to actually steal the entire screen shots you are just lazy.
As for WoW clones stealing ideas from WoW, according to some of your statements like kill wolves and return to blah-blah, those ideas go way back to Might &Magic series and Wizardry series. The M&M 6 game you have to kill wolves to complete a quest for a hunter.
It is debatable whether images of computer generated scenes generated by 3d engines are protected by copyright, when the viewpoint is free to move, since the creator of the 3d engine is clearly not artistically involved (though, the model itself is protected). Of course, you'd need to go to court to argue this, and there's a fair chance you'd lose :P
On 3rd June 2008 SBOVIS posted:
"Hi,
I am on the look out for a 2D/3D background artist for the sequel to LIMBO OF THE LOST. This is a % of royalty position for the right person.
The backgrounds need to be in 1024x768 resolution and the end result is a static 2D image.
Other parts of the job will be for alpha masks and layers within the scenes. Approx 80 backgrounds will be needed, if you can construct in 3D using an editor like Unreal 3 etc all the better."
Bit late for that now, mate, innit?
More here:
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?action=profile;u=157;sa=showPosts
Um, having two different FPS both having a theme of hell on earth and both featuring shotguns, or two MMOs featuring the fact that you have to do tedious, repetitive tasks to gain experience points isn't *quite* the same as wholesale ripping off entire areas, scenes, and character designs that another company *paid* an artist/designer to create for them.
You're saying that Ford would have no reason to complain if Kia lifted without modification, say, the entire centre console, front and rear end designs from a Focus for their next medium sized hatch - right down to the shutline tolerances and badges - because, well, they both make metal boxes with four wheels that go places.
Point<------------------------------------->Andy
Steven R
Andy, don't be naive. Whether you think a game is 'original' or not, doesn't mean that (in this case) the Oblivion developers didn't spend months building the 3d models and the texture artists didn't spend months building the textures etc. All these people cost money to pay for their work to produce really good looking and effective scenes.
To have some oik press printscreen and then profit from your work just because he thinks he can doesn't make it right.
There's a difference between copying the *idea* behind a game and the actual *artwork* which is very very different from stealing the "look and feel" of a game. A lot of time and money will have been spent producing the artwork for games that these muppets have stolen - why should they get away with it? IMO it's a criminal act and should be punished accordingly. Bring back hanging I say! Hang them until it hurts!
Erm, door, coat, offski
There is an amusing thread on Neogaf and on there there is talk about the original, Amiga, version that they worked on nearly 15 years ago. Turns out people have found that the artwork in that was ripped off too ...
Totally brilliant ... i just can't believe they thought they'd get away with this one ...
is the game story any good - having many a good idea for doujin games but no artistic ability I'm stuck contemplating ripping graphics. Art doesn't make a game, but it does help.
Of course I'd mention the fact that none of the art was mine, and wouldn't charge for it. Of course that's still illegal - but whatever.
I don't have much sympathy for them, if it was a free game, or a game being pushed for £2 off a website then maybe I would. But they were selling it as a full blown commercial product.
Hell if they turned up said "yeah we've made this game, but all the graphics are rips so we'd need an artist for 6 months to fix that." I'm sure they'd of still got some interest, but probably wouldn't have made the same profits...
Here's my prediction (not that anyone asked for it):
1) Distributor will be in the clear - they (appear to have) acted responsibly in withdrawing the game from sale.
2) Offended games manufacturers sue the arse of the developers
3) Offended distributor demand that the developers change the graphics
4) Developers change the graphics
5) Game goes on sale
6) Distributors withhold all royalties to the developers to cover their costs in withdrawing the game from distribution/re-distribution etc
7) Nobody buys the game. The game is a laughing stock.
8) Distributor sues developers for consequential losses.
Either way guys, you're fercked. You're not gonna paid for this game. Get a good lawyer, or a new identity.
Oh, and get your coats. Yours are marked PLAGARIST.
There are many sources of free, legal images you can use:
- Go out and shoot a few photos of landscapes, buildings etc. Play a bit with Photoshop if you think they are too boring-looking.
- Use artwork by long-dead artists. I'm sure you could make a nice P&C game from a collection of, say, old Arthur Rackham artwork.
- Google "public domain image".
So it is just plain silly to rip off copyrighted images.
BYW, one possibility that hasn't been discussed is that the developers may themselves have been victims of a rip off performed by an "artist" that they hired to do the artwork. If they just posted an ad in some forum, that might easily happen.
So much work goes into making game elements, I'm surprised there isn't more collaboration to create a repository of cool looking tree models and that sheep model that everyone uses.
Seriously, these copy and paste wizzards are going to jail. But the games industry is burning money recreating the same basic objects as everyone else and could do a better job and encouraging new talent by releasing some of the more mundane stuff with a reasonable CC license.
"publishers are interested in nothing but re-hashes and ripoffs" - bear in mind that lots of re-hashes and ripoffs are also commercial failures. Consumers don't care whether a game is original or not, and why should they? They aren't purists, they just want a good time, and the company that can sell its goods most effectively, with the most effective marketing, wins. The loser gets nothing, it doesn't matter if he or she was morally righteous. Moral righteousness won't put food on the table, for that you need a cudgle and the willpower to go out there and kill a bison, and skin it etc.
I mean, when a game copy-pastes levels, sounds, graphics, UI, and designs from a crapload of other good games, such as Thief 3, UT2004, Morrowind, Oblivion, WoW, Vampire: Bloodlines (one of my all time favs), Crysis, + more, it must be super awesome, right? It's like the combined awesomeness of all those games in one affordable title
"The Cliff Notes of gaming" etc.
The amazon reviews are just great.
http://www.amazon.com/Tri-Synergy-8-11002E-11-Limbo/dp/B0017XEGOK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1213882990&sr=8-1
If only my El Reg comments were that good.
just to throw this thought into the mix.
They didn't actually include the 3D models or raw textures in the game but an representation of the textures and models.
The screen shots used only really existed on their own machines (in theory) that rendering of that frame only took place due to players actions within the game.
Sort of at best it could be argued that they only included a representation of another publishers game without permission. Perhaps in that thase they may be able to argue some form of "fair use"
Graphically though the game bust have been a real dogs dinner.
Anyway I have other trouble to cassuse now ;)
Why Jobs ?
No doubt he will sue as it's his role to steal other peopls ideas and pass them off has Apples own unique revolution
I think there's more than meets the eye here.
Here's an interview from 1995...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/june08/limbo_preview_1.jpg
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/june08/limbo_preview_2.jpg
Check out the company name, bearing in mind "Tri Synergy" is their US publisher.
Coincidence? Hmmmm.....
Here's more for a good laugh:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?page_id=1909
These guys may have been simply trying to milk an advance out of a publisher I suppose-- if so good luck finding them after this. The publisher may not have any legal liability here but you really have to colour them stupid, whether or not they got taken for an advance...
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