Maddermadcat on 21/6/2008 at 03:38
Dear God, the goal of the prologue is to wake up a sleeping ogre so that you can force him asleep again?
Pure brilliance.
demagogue on 23/6/2008 at 16:55
For the record, I don't buy the "so out of touch" theory. Doesn't fit the profile, IMO.
My sense is these guys are a lot like the journalists you hear about occassionally that start either plaigerizing or making up their own stories and passing them off as research. Maybe the first time they do it, it's out of distress and laziness, but after doing it without anyone saying anything, they get a feeling of impunity ... and just start doing it again and again for the sheer ability to get away with it, until it's almost compulsive ... how far can I push it, and then it just becomes routine.
They start doing it for everything ... knowing what would happen if they got caught, trying not to get caught, but they are so carried away by it, under a shell of impunity (imagined), and make it routine anyway.
The Magpie on 23/6/2008 at 22:05
EDIT 2. Demagogue, finally a statement from Majestic Studios.
(
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6192856.html)
Quote:
The developers apparently came back to work today, as a source connected to Majestic issued to GameSpot the following statement from the studio:
"In response to the shocking notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.
Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorized copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the publication process.
To the best of our knowledge no one at Majestic, [European publisher] G2Games or [North American publisher Tri Synergy, Inc.] knew about this infringement and knowingly played any part in it.
We can only apologise to all regarding this issue, as a team we are shocked and mortified regarding these events and we continue to work with said publishers in order to rectify the issue."As the people on NeoGAF have pointed out, there are a couple of slight discrepancies somewhere here, most notably the same MO from thirteen years ago:
--
L.
Ducz on 24/6/2008 at 05:35
Head exploded...
I have no words but
MORE LOUNGE PIANO ENDINGS ! (with poor singing :p )
Innocuous on 24/6/2008 at 06:23
I'm sure that many indy developers struggle with budget, time constraints, etc. and may even dabble a little bit in some plagiarism. I don't think that this story should be blown so out of proportion. Does the nation look on in horror when a student plagiarizes on a term paper?
However, what sets this game apart is that it seems to be 99.9% stolen content. I mean, there doesn't seem to be a single original bit of artwork for this game besides the main character.
The entire premise of the game was that you are a sailor trapped in limbo. This was actually a novel by the same name written in 1969. So the whole basis of the game is plagiarism.
What were they trying to make here? If I were making a game, I would have some kind of goal, some purpose. Even if that goal is just to shoot dudes or steal stuff. There doesn't seem to be any point other than to steal other people's intellectual property in this little gem.
Thief 4: Copyright Infringement
crunchy on 24/6/2008 at 07:12
OH......MY.....FUCKING.....GOD!
That was awful.
Renault on 24/6/2008 at 13:38
Quote Posted by Innocuous
I'm sure that many indy developers struggle with budget, time constraints, etc. and may even dabble a little bit in some plagiarism. I don't think that this story should be blown so out of proportion. Does the nation look on in horror when a student plagiarizes on a term paper?
The big difference here being that these guys are actually trying to make money doing it. If it was a freeware game, you wouldn't see all the anger, just piles of laughter. This combined with the fact that a) as you mentioned, it wasn't one or two instances it was the entire game, and b) that they plagarized so blatantly, not even changing little details here and there to hide their crime. I mean, there's a screen from oblivion where they didn't even change the portrait in the picture frame.
It's hardly surprising that they are passing the buck in the blame department. They'd be crazy to come out and say, "Ok, you caught us, sorry about that!" I just find it hard to believe that in the end, that kind of lame excuse ("external souces") wills save them. I mean, at some point, Bethesda or Eidos or whoever is going to want to know who these sources are, right?
Zillameth on 24/6/2008 at 16:51
Quote Posted by Innocuous
I'm sure that many indy developers struggle with budget, time constraints, etc. and may even dabble a little bit in some plagiarism. I don't think that this story should be blown so out of proportion. Does the nation look on in horror when a student plagiarizes on a term paper?
Actually, in "my part of town" it mostly depends on student's age. A kid in an elementary school would just get a bad grade, but at my faculty at the university they would end up being severely humilliated and kicked out instantly with no hope of ever returning. As far as I know, devs of that game are adults, not kids.
Low budget is no excuse. It's a matter of developer's professionalism to design a game they are actually able to develop. That's why many indie games are in 2D, with simple graphics and a simple premise. Authors of Secret of the Monkey Island didn't have much more money than those guys did, and yet Secret of the Monkey Island is a very good adventure game, limited only by the hardware it was created for. Some games *cough* have intros or briefings made of a series of static images, and it doesn't prevent them from making a better impression on players than some CGI.
One of my former employers was a very unscrupulous low budget game developer who would treat their employees like slaves, and their clients like cattle, and even they didn't plagiarize anyone beyond themselves.
About a year ago, someone accidentally stumbled upon suspicious textures in Stalker. There was an allegation that they were stolen from Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. It was a major scandal, and the fact that Stalker was only a half-professional product wasn't enough of an excuse. Fortunately, as it turned out, those were just stock assets.
As a matter of fact, many assets can be procured cheaply. If nothing else, you can take a digital camera, go outside, take some generic pictures, and boom! you've got static backgrounds. Or you could make your game world out of (
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/neverhood) clay. A nonexclusive licence for a decent tune (2-3 minutes long) may cost you as little as a hundred dollars.
