Just cos CVG post over a month old stuff, Kotaku has to follow suit? :/

Al3xandr0s

I feel for these old guys. Just bunch of adults who wanted to create something out of their hobby and learned how to copy and paste.

Do you honestly believe they met everyday and maliciously talked about assets they could steal?. I don't even think they can afford a lawyer; talking about jobs and whatnot. Just look at them, probably friends since childhood who enjoyed the gaming medium. The other two seems completely off the radar, since not one of them had the capacity to think, " Wait, isn't this from another game?"

The game looks awful anyways, majority will not care unless this game becomes a blockbuster; which it won't. Let it die off.

Yes, the principal is wrong; but how often do you get 50 year olds coming up with headlines like this?, its the first for me in 24 years. It will not be a frequent case, since developers with success in mind will not copy any assets to begin with.

PsycheE

[lotl.wikia.com]

Contains a list of everything found so far.

jeresun

@Snokie:

Have you watched the trailer? It's truly painful, the voice acting is appalling.

Zelos

@Shiryu:

Hope no longer, Shiryu!
Read the Neogaf thread, and BELIEVE!

Snokie

it wouldn't be a big deal if they didn't intend to sell it. if they gave it away for free then nobody would care. at this point i am curious how the game plays and what puzzles they actually created themselves. i'm sure it sucks, just wondering what they actually brought to the table.

i predict this will be a collectors item if it actually it avaiable through retail. lawyers will stop it quick enough to make it scarce.

gentlejones

Mr Francis, 47, who also provides the voice for the game's lead character Captain Briggs,

Forget the plagiarism, "DIY Voice Acting" is reason enough to avoid this game.

Snokie

I really don't understand why they have done this. This is like breaking into your neighbours house and stealing all their stuff then going round the next day and trying to sell it back to them. They are going to get sued till they bleed. There is no recovery from this. The icing on the cake is it took three years to come up with it. Humanity continues to astound!

mrtin

Of course they made it themselves! All they needed was a little cutting here, a little pasting there... slap some photoshopped snow over that house, adjust the stairs on this one a bit... and viola! They've created their own videogame using the property of others!

Guvnah

ah I just saw the oblivion stuff, yeah that is a big list then, lol...

Murdoc

They made the game from home? Of course they neglected to mention they made it at there mum's home.

Snozzberry

You know it really is a shame. I'll bet those old-timers were totally getting a ton of action for publishing such a bad-ass game. Now that they've been caught, it'll all be downhill.

Snozzberry

@Murdoc:
They've literally copy-pasted their backgrounds from ther games. They've copy-pasted assets. They've used clips from other movies. They copied at least part of their script from another place. They've used pictures from google images (they used a picture of a state of a Ringwraith bust for one of their areas).
Hell, their trailer uses clips from Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie), Pirates of the Caribbean (the game), Crysis, and Unreal.
Their main menu is an exact copy of the menu of the LotR RTS game, their in-game menus are compsed of Diablo II's window graphics, and a section of a WoW wallpaper...

...The list (literally) goes on and on.

[www.neogaf.com]
Read that whole thread. 15 pages of findings, it's pretty funny actually, how these guys blatantly copied from so many other games, and expected to get by unnoticed.

Coquiton

@Coquiton: No way! I knew I had seen that person/character somewhere before. Damn. That is just shameless that they would do that....

DannKnee

@ElijahDProphet:

In UK a mature student is a student over a certain age (25 I believe).

Also, I get the feeling that only one of these guys, the one credited with "creating" the art and stuff, was in on this. The other two probably had no idea, and must have loved their partner's "Hey guys, check out this art I made!" skills. Poor bastards.

J.A.

This is way more press than the game should have ever gotten. It's one thing to be remembered for making a really good game, or even making a really bad game, but this, being remembered for being theifs and liars, is the worst.

MasonL87

That's sooo funny! Should I feel insulted that they thought us gamers wouldn't notice all that stolen material?

Spiraltribesman

@Murdoc: No, they used actual screenshots from the games as backgrounds in theirs.

Jeff Paine

@housewarmer: Bring them torches. We will burn them at high noon.

Shiryu

"Our hope, if everything goes well with the sales, is that within a year we will all be stopping the day jobs and doing this full time."

ffffffffsh. Yeah. Ouch.

DamnYouKrycek

I kinda wish I could play this, so I can sample the art and architecture from a bunch of different games for the price of one game.

I KID.

greyhoundbus

Yeah they probably did just remake the assets based off of other screenshots as reference.

Is that illegal? I dunno, is it wrong? Yeah.

Murdoc

The guy on the right has really got that "not sure if we should release this, people might find out about our "inspiration" from other games and it might get us in trouble" look.

Bluetribal

Guys! We need to stop feeding this troll!

We're playing right into their hands!

PatMan33

"Our hope, if everything goes well with the sales, is that within a year we will all be stopping the day jobs and doing this full time."
Unfortunately for them they will have to stop their day jobs for an entirely different reason :/

Amorbis

@Shiryu: Uh, what? What's the confusion? They ripped off assets from half the games released since Diablo II. There's no "allegedly" or "potentially". The shit is taken straight out of other developer's games. There's nothing to believe - it's just a straight up fact.

housewarmer

"Our hope, if everything goes well with the sales, is that within a year we will all be stopping the day jobs and doing this full time."

Best quote in the article.
Seriously, three years?? Was it that hard to copy-paste from all those games?
It's amazing how nothing in the game is original, not even the main character.
[www.neogaf.com]

Coquiton

What is a "mature student"? Was he an immature landlord previously?

ElijahDProphet

I agree that there's an inevitable amount of similarity between games these days, but when the painting on the wall is the same...well, then you have a problem.

Interstella5555

Methinks the "research" was the largest part of that development cycle.

QualityJeverage

They kinda look like mobsters. Like they'll wack you and then take your game design.

Kanik

I hope to see the truth behind all of this... I really dunno whom to believe anymore.

Shiryu

Press Release from a contractor (on gamefaqs no less)
[boards.gamefaqs.com]

Text:

FREE TO PUBLISH

Composers announcement about Limbo of the Lost

June 20th 2008, in Berlin, Germany

Following the controversy currently revolving around Limbo of the Lost pc game, released by Majestic Studios, UK, I feel a comment from my part is necessary as this situation has all the potential to make irreversible damage to my name as composer and thus hinder my future career opportunities. Furthermore, I have seen my name mentioned in several internet discussion forums and there has been speculation about if the game contains stolen music but so far that has not been proven one way or another. Majestic Studios project leader Steve Bovis has assured me that there isn't any stolen music in the game.

I composed all the game level background music you hear in the game itself, as well as most of the animated features included on the bonus DVD. My music was also used in many of the game trailers and features, easily found online. In addition to my music, there are also pieces not made by myself. On those I can not comment but I can 100% guarantee everything I was involved in and I have the original project files to prove that.

As a further proof, I uploaded some of the pieces on my demo site, accessible at [chaosresearch.googlepages.com]

I worked on the music for Limbo of the Lost game from May 2006 to December 2006 as an outsourcer, so I was never a part of Majestic Studios core team. I also don't have any information regarding the specifics of the creation process of the game. The stolen graphical assets were as much a shock to me than to anyone else and I hope there will be some explanation to that from Majestic Studios. At the moment they are the only ones who know how or why this happened.

I am only credited for my music in the .pdf manual of the game.

Sincerely,

Marko Hautamäki, composer

###

kingmanic

I just finished looking the original NeoGAF thread about this, and I am simply stunned. They stole from Beetlejuice for crying out loud! Yes, the movie.

W.T.F.

Kirksplosion

I'm gonna sue Canada, for copying France.

BADLY!

i kid. no wait, i don't. screw you Canada.

Peter-Moore

I bought the game just because it's so hilariously plageristic (I know that's not a word) and is sure to be a collector's item. I have the box but I fear actually starting the game may invoke some kind of curse against me... plus I'm playing other games right now anyway.

DaveKap

copying other peoples stuff is bad

mmmmm' kay

Peter-Moore

@Snokie: Burn them! Burn them all! Heretics! we will make an example out of them, so no other dev ever tries to pull a stunt like this.

Shiryu

@DaveKap:

You're a brave man and it was nice knowing you. ;)

I'd buy it myself, but I can't see myself spending $29.99 for it on Amazon. Maybe when the price drops to .50 cents, then we'll talk.

Pezdispenser

"Mr Francis, of Reginald Road, said he hoped their story would inspire other PC users to the full potential of their machines."

Actually, ever since I heard their story, I think I will try harder not to make a complete rip-off game.

@PsycheE: Yeah, but I'm sure it wasn't a case of "Hey guys, look what I made last night!", every morning when they worked on it. There must've been some knowledge of what was happening

RandolphCarter

If they did this to entertain us then I'm sorry to say that they failed horribly. Fortunately they can still turn this charade around and sue the developers they copied. Now THAT would be highly amusing.

garytek

what about the person who bought their lunch?...

did he steal the money off some geeky kid in the playground?

Peter-Moore

@Doomstalk: I wish I was that trusting of people. But I'm not. It's pretty apparent to me that most people are greedy and selfish. I'm more inclined to believe they had full knowledge of what they were doing than believe they were innocent guys on a quest to create a product for their beloved medium and just didn't realize they were illegally using assets from other games.

To quote the linked article:

"Our hope, if everything goes well with the sales, is that within a year we will all be stopping the day jobs and doing this full time."

Atheist Jew

"The project is more influenced by film and literature rather than other games, we want the experience to be as original as possible and as such we have made a calculated effort to keep away from other games in the genre."

"All of the game (apart from initial background story and some character designs) had to be re-written, all the characters had to be created in 3D and animated, all the background scenes re-created, all the sounds, coding and music?..basically everything had to be redone or newly created for the PC version. This is not an old game that has been dressed up."

- Steve Bovis

Lorch

@PsycheE: That would be all well and good had they left it as a fun project/experiment rather than tried to publish and sell it.

kidko

@Atheist Jew: I don't necessarily think your cynicism is warranted. If you're trying to cash in on the video game industry, you sure as hell don't do it by making a point and click adventure game. And, by all accounts, the game was quite decent. They're definitely in the wrong, but I don't think there was anything sinister about it.

Doomstalk

Lying scum.

@PsycheE: You're simplifying this. Why? These guys "produced" a game with assets lifted from many blockbuster titles. Why do you assume that simply because they're middle aged they didn't know what they're doing? They're certainly old enough to know about copyright laws, and they're certainly old enough to know that plagiarism is bad, not to mention illegal.

No, this is a case of three guys seeing that the game industry is booming, figured they could steal parts of other games and throw it into their own, publish it, and make money the scores of morons out there that purchase budget games.

Do you forget they managed to get the game published? There were business negotiations involved. This is not a case of

"WE LOVE GAMES SO MUCH WE JUST WANTED TO MAKE ONE TOO!"

This is a case of

"We can make a budget game by tossing together other people's work without the legal permission to do so, get it published by some ignorant, oblivious small-time publishing firm, and make a killing off of the idiots that tend to purchase budget PC games."

Additionally, why do you think people won't care? Do you think the developers who originally produced the content won't give a damn to see their work stolen? Do you think the companies that own that content won't care to see their copyrighted material being used illegally, without their permission, in another product? The quality of the game doesn't matter in the least, it's the principle of what these douche bags did, and they knew exactly what they were doing.

Atheist Jew

we're da best mayne, we did it

gentlejones

I actually feel really bad for Laurence and Tim, since all of the coding and art was done by Steve Bovis. They probably had no idea of the thievery Steve was doing on both coding and art assets since I doubt they've played many games in recent years. This theory kind of breaks under the fact that stuff was stolen from films too, but I digress.

Steve however, I feel no remorse for. Dude not only had the community of the free engine he was using code the game for him (he would always go in and ask help for something and even when they told in plain words what to do, he would keep saying he didnt understand it until he got code samples) but just about every art asset in the game came from somewhere else. I bet he's the one on the far right of that photo not smiling. Fucker knows what he did.

Lijik

@garytek: "If they did this to entertain us then I'm sorry to say that they failed horribly."

i disagree, this is rich with intertube gigglerz

gentlejones

Waiting on my copy from Amazon.

You know, Amazon must have a whole department devoted to "stuff that is being pulled from the market and suddenly everyone wants to buy it"...

expansionsss

These guys have some big balls on em is all I can say. If you're going to be so brash about stealing assets than at least have the smarts to steal from crap that's so obscure that nobody will catch onto your hustle.

Guild_Navigator

I just re-read the NeoGAF thread since this broke. Good Lord, this is the story that keeps on giving! They stole from Bettlejuice for crying out loud! Is nothing sacred anymore?

DrLiquid

@Atheist Jew: I'm not saying that what they did wasn't wrong, or that they were unaware that it was illegal. I'm just saying that I don't think they were wringing their hands and laughing maniacally as they awaited their dump trucks full of money. That just ain't gonna happen with an adventure game.

Doomstalk

@Doomstalk:

"And, by all accounts, the game was quite decent."

Um....

WHAT?!?!?!

Trym

@Doomstalk: Your accounts were wrong. 0/10 from Boomtown. Lowest mark they ever gave any game.

[pc.boomtown.net]

kingmanic

i know its wrong, but i really wanna play this game now for shits n giggles. gotta hit up the torrents when i get home, look at that! im gunna be stealing a game that stole from games!

pandafresh

@Shiryu:

I'm not sure if you're not getting MY jokes,
or I'm not getting YOUR jokes.

Either way, peace bro :)

Snokie

@Ghede:

I disagree -- by paying for the game, we're giving cash to the people who deserve it (eventually)! (Bethesda, Epic, Looking Glass...)

playclever

@expansionsss: ... I'd hate to advocate piracy but... pirate this game. Please. Don't pay for it. At all. Ever.

Ghede (Follow me for no raisin)

@Doomstalk: I'll agree that they probably weren't wringing their hands and laughing maniacally BUT don't you think it's much more entertaining to imagine that they were doing that?

BEAUTIFUL MONEY! MAH-HAHAHAHAHA!

Awesome.

Atheist Jew

I bought a copy... I'm a collector, and this is something I have to own. It's just so blatantly illegal. I have to be a part of this piece of gaming history.

Akanubon

Guys, there is an obvious explanation for this. It's called Placeholder art. Obviously, they made the whole game with placeholder art, never intending to ship it that way. Then one guy asked the other guy to contract out for some real art, and then he asked the other guy, and then pretty soon, they're sitting around a pool drinking pina colada's, reading about the shitstorm. "I thought you were going to do it". "Me? I thought you were." etc. Any one can see this was completely unintended.

HackJenkins

The sad thing is, this game is going for between $80.00 to $100.00 on eBay now. This whole illegal thing actually worked out to helping sales on this game.

Doomstink

I've been following the LotL story since day one and I gotta say it's given me a hell of a lot of entertainment even though I don't have copy of it. Failure, disasters and stupidity all make fun reading to me these guys are champs. I'm pretty certain that I've seen the tiger image their logo is based on somewhere else before. NOTHING they've done - from the title of the game to the actual puzzles they programmed - are original.

mariospants

"A bit like Monty Python meets Evil Dead"

I like both of them but how its supposed to translate into a game is beyond me.

d_unique