You know its kind of sad this is the case but its a harsh reality. People who can*,*will steal your concept if you show it off and are not quick to market.
I’m saying this because in the past few weeks this has been on my mind. I’ve worked on my game project for three-ish years, and truth be told I’ve been in no great hurry to finish it. Its been a good learning experience. However I believe that a game company took the idea. The game I’m talking about is Everspace. Same control scheme, and the devs have even taken some phrases from my demo, like “Target data” in the cockpit.
I’ve got a close friend who has sunk a lot of money and time in to a similarly “grand” project. He’s not your typical game dev. He’s actually been the producer on the project. He recently said his goodbyes to the project, letting a few friends take over. The reason being another company copied his game and beat him to market. That game is called Blackwake.
The last story I have is of just a channel I’ve seen on Youtube featuring some CoD-esque ac-130 gunship demo.
Its quite high on the search list if you use the right filters. There’s a similar game out now, called zombie gunship survival. I think its brilliantly creative however its a sad case that the dev showed off his work before he could capitalize on it.
Ac-130 project:
Zombie gunship Survival:
Blackwake:
Everspace:
So the moral of these stories is: if you are not serious about your project, but you still care, do not show it to an audience until you’re serious. There’s no point in jeopardizing it if you aren’t going to be consistently marketing it.
[edit] forgot to mention that the makers of Everspace are a German company. Guess where the #2 highest view count is from on my channel?
Or, you know, it’s a coincidence and you’re making pretty unfounded claims against people who probably worked on that game for years.
edit: Yep, years. Everspace came to Kickstarter in August of 2015 with a whole host of actual displayed content and clear design goals. You’re attributing what seems to be a pretty clear coincidence to malice.
Yeah, no offence, but your channel has like a handful of views and seems to be made up of just a series of WIP videos using very basic primitive or untextured art. I don’t think the developers of the highly polished and professional EVERSPACE have been watching your videos and getting ideas. I’d say any similarities on simple phrases like “Target Data” are coincidental.
Also, you say yourself that your game is inspired by Freelancer. Maybe their game is inspired by Freelancer too
You think someone stole Mouse Flight? Why would anyone want to steal Mouse Flight? Its garbage.
Mouse Flight is a generic space shooter. So is Everspace. So are a hundred different games that have been released. I’m sorry, but you had nothing original on your YouTube channel worth stealing.
Idea are cheap, execution is where the money is, I swear sometimes there is game that just pick the idea right from my brain, even if I have never told about them. Realize that you are made of the same influence than others, and with same culture and value the same conclusion will happen, try to break free from that, influence are bad for a creator (whatever people say, it’s only good when you pick something “foreign” into something stagnant), brilliant idea in your head are actually not so brilliant is a thing I had discovered early. Similarly as a teen I used to love to joke trying to build the most tropey stuff possible, adding layer after layer of non sense, until I realize people genuinely liked that … So don’t try too hard either, again execution is key, the same concept don’t mean the same game, it’s call a genre.
I looked at that Everspace demo. I own that game. It’s not called “Everspace” though, and it came out a number of years ago. Actually, I’m pretty sure I own that game twice, though one of them sucked so bad in the control scheme I only played it for about five minutes before uninstalling.
I am not saying they couldn’t have taken things from your channel and your demos. Just remember that most video games take elements and even whole cloth from the ones that came before. Steal from one and it’s plagiarism; steam from many and it’s research.
Looking more closely at your other two examples, Blackwake is just Guns of Icarus on the ocean, which came out over five years ago now and they’re probably trying to capitalise on that. As for your other example, AC-130 segments have been in CoD and Saints Row at this point and they’re generally regarded as fun segments. They’re probably copying those instead of an honestly pretty half-baked Unity demo.
Dude. I’m certain they didn’t steal it. Concepts aren’t unique, and a lot of people came up with similar concept at the same time. Ideas are not valuable. Their execution is.
For example, this game:
Has a very high similarity to the idea I had a long time ago. Except that they made it, and I didn’t.
You’re worrying about minor part of designs that can be similar to yours by accident and think those are valuable. Games had drone sequences before as well:
Also, good luck trying to come up with unique control scheme for a flight sim that hasn’t been tried before.
In 1993, I wrote a story about a magical boy whose parents were killed by the big evil of the story and left a scar on him in the shape of a lightning bolt (on his hand). I have proof. I also shared this story with friends when I lived in London in the mid 90s. That doesn’t mean I’m going to accuse J.K. of stealing the story that was never published! Especially since I more or less ripped off Star Wars! And, also, that’s where the similarities end.
I was working on Brevis before Everspace hit Kickstarter and had almost exactly the same premise, control style, ship ideas, jump from zone to zone, upgrade system - even the freaking weapons were similar… Everspace is virtually what Brevis would have been if I had budget for a big project.
But since games like that are essentially inspired by games before them (as I was) and those games by games before them, and so on… There’s no tin foil hattery going on.
This is very bold, and to be honest a ludicrous notion.
Is your “game” even really - a game? Is it playable in any build, other than the Unity editor? Regardless - they didn’t steal your game ‘idea’.
Maybe you can provide a little more evidence of this ‘idea’ theft beyond those two coincidental silly examples. Two words in the cockpit are the same and people from Germany (population 81 million) infrequently visit your youtube channel.
Here is some factual evidence.
Your “first game” posted on your youtube channel on 29 October 2014.
Rockfish first posted on twitter about the game they were already working on 17 Feb 2014.
Prior to that employees including the CEO of Rockfish had worked on a game called Galaxy on Fire 2 - as FishLabs employees, released in 2009. Might check it out Galaxy on Fire is very similar to the eventual Everspace.
So when did they frequent your youtube channel and steal your game idea?
Example of different people copying a small segment of a AAA game first developed and delivered in COD4 in 2007. Hardly an original concept.
I’m strongly against people stealing other peoples IP and ripping complete game ideas and rebranding them as there own like many mobile companies - but this is just fantasy. Nobody stole your game idea. More likely your “game concept” was subliminally inspired by someone elses creation and you don’t even know it.
This is art…it is normal that the inspire each other…also, games are art too… that’s it.
…but maybe it’s better not discharge all the cards on the table when the game isn’t over yet…if you had anything truly original
I appreciate the honesty and reasoning guys. I’m not going to explain my thinking, because few would understand it and to be perfectly honest I am under no obligation to explain myself to anyone.
Yeah. I was wrong.
You know just because you’re well liked on these boards I don’t see how that gives you an excuse to be such a jerk. This may ignite a sh*tstorm, but who cares what you think anyway?
There was the opportunity to say something civil, like “I don’t think anyone wants to steal your game concept, reasons being…x,y,z” but nope.
I am not quite sure what it is that makes me p*** so many people off at least online. I am not quite so sure what was so provocative about this.
[edit] I forgot to add, even with the thought of someone taking the concept in their own direction, I was not super upset by this. Literally could not care less. Truth be told, Everspace went in a completely different direction than I have been aiming for. This post was about a thought that has been pervading my consciousness for weeks now, not all about my project. Everspace is like 1% or 2% of what I’ve been shooting for.
The last time I made a post about something like this, what upset me was the work investment. I mean the person on YT asking about how I did everything was kind of irritating. Granted I was wrong to be a jerk about it. I still think that if I hadn’t been sleep deprived and woken up early none of that would have happened. I am proud of my work and to just give it away is not my idea of fair. Its my choice to make.
I don’t intend to play a judge in this matter. But I suspect what he meant was probably just that your game is worthless as a reference that some commercial studio would want to base their entire game on, not that it’s worthless even as a quite cool looking prototype, which I think it really is.
And I think people in this thread have used such strong words to rebuke your claim, because it contains quite strong accusations against likely innocent game developers.
I suppose there’s no need to harbor harsh feelings against anyone in this matter, because everyone gets mistaken sometimes, and it’s not a big deal unless that person adheres to his or her original position even after it’s proven wrong.
Your word of caution is true, regardless of if someone actually did steal your idea. But this is just human nature, we see something awesome, for instance a painting, and we ourselves have a canvas and paint… we want to emulate the awesome paintings we have seen in the past in hopes of achieving their success and stuff like that.
Sure, sometimes a company or individual can blatantly copy something from an existing product, often with no legal issues at all, but I feel like if your working on something, and a competing product comes out before your done, just learn from it. Avoid the parts of that game you think they didn’t execute well, make your game more fun, better smoother mechanics, more features…
I wouldn’t be so quick to say “it’s been copied” as much as "they had a very similar idea and POSSIBLY they stumbled across your game and took inspiration from it… but I’d focus on outdoing them now. Don’t let some existing product stop you from working on something you had passion for. If nothing else wait longer to release yours in hopes the other will go stale and not take potential traffic from you.
