Are there any interesting examples of alleged copying within the video game industry?

[Multievolution]

I'm not talking about inspiration from another game say the cover mechanics that were rife within the mid 2000's or the occasional Easter egg, so much as to use a film example how the Paul Blart: Mall Cop film script was allegedly a stolen copy of observe and report's based on the timing of the two films and what some crew have said.

It's not always going to be possible to verify these types of stories that said if there is any you know of please share, for whatever reason I can't think of any video game ones off the top of my head so apologise

 

[jonjonaug]

There's lots of games that have stolen assets from other games. Usually shovelware. Limbo of the Lost is probably the most famous of such cases.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

Flappy Bird took those pipes straight outta the mushroom kingdom.

Jk, I think they just look the same.

 

[MisterAnderson]

I think I remember an expose post on reddit showing how Overwatch straight up copied early Paladin prototype character designs (mechanics and the designs themselves), meanwhile the opposite was thought to be true for a while. Can't remember if it was due to an ex-employee who left the project and went to Blizzard or something.

 

[Souls Survivor]

I remember some devs claiming that Shadow of Mordor used code or animations from Assassin's Creed 2, but I don't remember if anything came of it.

 

[Tanuki-Go]

Does the story of Atari/Tengen creating their own version of the NES lockout chip to bypass Nintendo count?

Atari attempted to determine the function and behavior of the 10NES chip by other means to reverse engineer the chip, including by monitoring the chip's digital communication and by attempting to analyze the underlying circuitry via chemically stripping layers from the chip, but neither provided the required details. In 1988, Atari had its lawyers obtain the source code for the 10NES from the Copyright Office, by falsely alleging that a copy of the code was needed in a copyright infringement action. Atari used this copy to develop its own replica of the 10NES, the Rabbit, which generated signals functionally indistinguishable from the 10NES.

Click to shrink...

 

[B.K.]

 

[Laughing Banana]

Naughty Dog being naughty.

 

[kurahador]

Does movie - game count? Uncharted 3 plane looks pretty similar to Captain America First Avenger at the end. They both were released in 2011.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

The whole issue with Rime/Tequila Works and Kumo comes to mind.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/te...o-up-dev-admits-fault-see-threadmarks.198546/

 

[Caiusto]

Surprised no one mentioned the PUBG x Epic Games lawsuit

 

[Zomba13]

Limbo of the Lost was almost entirely stolen assets and backgrounds. There was a good thead on NeoGAF about it back before it went to shit (a google says the thread was 14 years ago.....).

Example:

The background is a shop from Oblivion.


EDIT: Quick google to see if there were any youtube vids on it and found this one

Limbo of the Lost: The Greatest Bad Game

This Limbo of the Lost journey looks at a game that revels in its sheer existence, along with examining the most famous cases of plagiarism, bizarre puzzles,...

www.youtube.com

Don't know who they are and not watched the vid yet but if they are a shitheel let me know and I'll remove the link.

 

[Yuntu]

There's lots of games that have stolen assets from other games. Usually shovelware. Limbo of the Lost is probably the most famous of such cases.

Click to shrink...

Limbo of the Lost is the weirdest fucking game lol

 

[Vondudu]

Konami Used Super Mario Bros 3 Code for a Tiny Toons Video Game

A French blogger believes that Konami reverse-engineered the code for Super Mario Bros 3 to make their NES Tiny Toons game.

techraptor.net

 

[Kromis]

Limbo of the Lost was almost entirely stolen assets and backgrounds. There was a good thead on NeoGAF about it back before it went to shit (a google says the thread was 14 years ago.....).

Example:

The background is a shop from Oblivion.


EDIT: Quick google to see if there were any youtube vids on it and found this one

Limbo of the Lost: The Greatest Bad Game

This Limbo of the Lost journey looks at a game that revels in its sheer existence, along with examining the most famous cases of plagiarism, bizarre puzzles,...

www.youtube.com

Don't know who they are and not watched the vid yet but if they are a shitheel let me know and I'll remove the link.

Click to shrink...

HOLY SHIT! I forgot all about this little nugget of history from the old place. Goddamn how time flies...

 

[Plinkerton]

Not a video game, but it was pretty crazy that the Nintendo editor for the biggest video game website on the internet ended being a mass-plagiarist.

IGN to scrub Filip Miucin from site almost completely after even more plagiarism surfaces (READ OP)

Reminder: This is not a thread to discuss mental health or Filip Miucin's family. Stick to the topic please. https://www.resetera.com/posts/11513698/ UPDATE: In case you don't know what's going on, the previous thread...

www.resetera.com

 

[dskzero]

There was a minor fuss regarding Genshin Impact and Nier Automata very similar animations, though they might not be stolen but just heavily inspired by Nier:Automata.



It died down rather quickly and I don't play the game so I'm not sure if it remains.

Other than that Bloober team has this notoriety of taking liberal inspiration of other games, using public domain images, and using well known references in their games. It's really up to yourself to say this is plagiarism. This video shows some of it, though it's now dated (the part about the Medium shows a different design of the MC) and I don't agree with some of it, but then again Bloober Team is not a popular dev and people feel very strongly about it.



They do definitely "follow trends" a lot.

 

[Keldroc]

Does movie - game count? Uncharted 3 plane looks pretty similar to Captain America First Avenger at the end. They both were released in 2011.

Click to shrink...

The Uncharted sequence began development years earlier, so this is almost certainly coincidence. They're both pretty standard ways of shooting that action.

 

[Turnabout Sisters]

Kingdom Hearts 1: Monstro goes beyond being an homage to Jabu Jabu from OoT. They literally said "ok this idea of what the inside of a whale looks like is mine now." Especially with the entire player control being pretty much directly descended from OoT.

 

[HsuNgAn]

 

[Xils]

There was a minor fuss regarding Genshin Impact and Nier Automata very similar animations, though they might not be stolen but just heavily inspired by Nier:Automata.



It died down rather quickly and I don't play the game so I'm not sure if it remains.

Click to shrink...

MHY has been doing something like this since before Genshin and at this point I don't expect them to change.
Honkai's main character's entire moveset is practically just Bayonetta with a different model. At least her later versions moved away from that.

 

[Lork]

Duke Nukem 1 and 2 plagiarized a bunch of assets from Turrican and other European PC games.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

MHY has been doing something like this since before Genshin and at this point I don't expect them to change.
Honkai's main character's entire moveset is practically just Bayonetta with a different model. At least her later versions moved away from that.

Click to shrink...

It ranges from blatant to kind of similar. That whole game felt derivative to me.

 

[Farlander]

Does movie - game count? Uncharted 3 plane looks pretty similar to Captain America First Avenger at the end. They both were released in 2011.

Click to shrink...

The Captain America/Uncharted 3 similarity would mostly be a coincidence (because Uncharted 3 plane scene would need to have started development AT LEAST a year before Captain America movie was out, though probably more).

BUT.

That being said, the Uncharted plane scene took absolutely CLEAR inspirations from an older James Bond movie.



But I would say that it's still more of an inspiration than blatant copying.

 

[JJD]

Borderlands 1 change of art style.

The Captain America/Uncharted 3 similarity would mostly be a coincidence (because Uncharted 3 plane scene would need to have started development AT LEAST a year before Captain America movie was out, though probably more).

BUT.

That being said, the Uncharted plane scene took absolutely CLEAR inspirations from an older James Bond movie.



But I would say that it's still more of an inspiration than blatant copying.

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Not only that but trailers showed glimpses of that set piece before the Captain America movie premiered.

 

[Jetsun Mila]

Kingdom Hearts 1: Monstro goes beyond being an homage to Jabu Jabu from OoT. They literally said "ok this idea of what the inside of a whale looks like is mine now." Especially with the entire player control being pretty much directly descended from OoT.

Click to shrink...

Same with Ape Escape 1. Dexters Island is an obvious hommage to Jabu Jabu. Even the doors are in the same style

and the boss of that level is a tentacle monster

 

[Tunesmith]

Does EA reverse engineering the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive!) count?

 

[Efejota]

There's a few music examples with early japanese gaming.



(Zelda's Fairy Fountain)

 

[ProstatePuncher]

I heard that none of Ken Masters techniques may be original, and could possibly have been adopted from Ryu.

 

[stangthang26]

First thing that comes to mind is the Okami port on Wii that had the IGN watermark on the cover