
Majestic Studios accused of pinching ideas from established titles
A video games studio based in Maidstone, Kent, has been accused of unlawfully copying content from other games.
Majestic Studios, which is run by Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis, sold adventure game Limbo of the Lost to US distributor Tri Synergy, which released the title in the territory.
However, games bloggers have pointed out 'startling' similarities between Limbo of the Lost and a range of established video games.
According to The Telegraph, Majestic claims it has been creating the title since the early 1990s.
"Between the three of us we researched, wrote, designed, animated, scripted and developed the whole game from home," Laurence Francis told his local paper the Kent Messenger in a recent interview.
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The newspaper quotes Eric Franck, a writer for GamePlasma, who was among one of the first to spot the alleged similarities between Limbo of the Lost and other famous games.
He and compared a screenshot from the British game with one from another smash-hit game, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Since then, hundreds of other have allegedly shown ‘astonishing’ similarities between Limbo Of The Lost and other titles such as Unreal Tournament 2004, Crysis and BioShock.
Tri Synergyimmediately withdrew Limbo of the Lost from sale on learning of the complaints, and issued a statement expressing its "shock" at the news.
"At no point during our dealings with Majestic Studios up until the point that the comparison was first publicly made by a third party did we have any knowledge of these similarities," said the statement.
"We have contacted the developer, Majestic, and are anxiously awaiting their response. As soon as we know more on this matter we will issue another statement."
Majestic Studios was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
Comments
Limbo is already a meme of sorts...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?page_id=1909" onclick="window.open ( this.href ); return false;" class="comment_url" >http://www.rockpap...=1909
Brilliant!
Re: Limbo is already a meme of sorts...
I sooo want this game!
Re: Re: Limbo is already a meme of sorts...
LOL nice one post 1.
Not sure of the ins and outs but where do you draw the dividing line between plagirism and "inspiration"? If they had stolen textures, gaming code etc. then obviously they are bang to rights. Not really bothered about it all to be honest. Remember PC gaming when it was at its height, and everyone was using the Quake3 engine to make their FPS's? They all felt and looked the same. Already all the stuff made on the Unreal 3.0 game engine looks and feels samey. Same goes for anything Ubisoft dishes out. I know its an easy example, but would the makers of Saints Row be done for plagirism too, seeing as it was simply GTA with a few extra bells and whistles?
Really?
So, a game that looks like Oblivion, Unreal Tournament 2004, Crysis and BioShock. So an RPG FPS set in an underwater forest. sweeet
Does this mean that Nintendo will sue Ubisoft because Health Coach is too similar to Wii Fit?
Re: Really?
Well the same thing happened back in 2003 when sega tried to sue Fox interactive and EA over the simularities between simpsons road rage and crazy taxi, that got settled out of court. It will be intresting to see what happens if this one does end up in court though.
Re: Re: Really?
lol i hate when people do this. Woodins makes a good point about games like Quake and Half-life and how their textures were used through lots of mods but the difference here is that couner-strike is free (apart from the cd key for hl of course) and made with the permission of the company who made the original textures.
This game isn't free and doesn't have the permission, hell i bet it doesn't even have any credit within the code acknowledging the people who worked hard to make them. I'm not supirsed it only took three of them, i could make a game on my own if 90% of it was already pre-made for me too.
It will be good to see how many games they ripped stuff from, as that number times a few million pounds is how much they are screwed lol
Re: Re: Re: Really?
@ 6
I think you're spot on. Theres a big distinction between using the Half Life 2 with permission or conceptual disputes and this where large chunks of the environment have been copy and pasted into a new game without the creators knowledge. Hilarious to think they thought someone wouldnt spot it!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Really?
it's just funny that they took screenshots of other games and used them for the levels then stated that they designed the textures from scratch....talk about ballsy
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Really?
how old is this piece of news? i knew about this 2 weeks ago????
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