Limbo of the Lost - Epic fail

johnny_ultimate

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=310683&page=10
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28891.html#comments_top
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_of_the_Lost

Probably the funniest gaming story Ive heard in quite some time. Some independent developer making a crappy looking point 'n click game robbed assets from every game going (and some films including Pirates of the Caribbean too) and is now get sued by Bethedsa amongst others (some scenes were robbed entirely out of Morrowind and Oblivion. The neogaf thread is hilarious - users keep spotting more games it robbed from.

One the funniest gaming stories on the internet in years

Kiith

* The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
* Unreal Tournament 2004
* Unreal Tournament 2003
* Diablo II
* Thief: The Dark Project
* Thief: Deadly Shadows
* a CryENGINE2 Tech Demo
* Silent Hill 4: The Room[citation needed]
* Return to Castle Wolfenstein
* Painkiller
* Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
* The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
* Hexen
* World of Warcraft.

Thats a pretty long list of games to steal from. Did they actually think no one would notice?

Kur4mA

LMAO! They either have quite the set of balls or else they're all retarded. I'm guessing the latter. :pac:

Mr E

The beetlejuice one on the last page is incredibly blatant.... wow.

Can I just say that neogaf site has some of the most annoying animated avatars I've ever seen?

pixelburp

I feel sorry for these guys, I genuinely do, they're being hauled over the coals for a cockup. I would have to dig out the old article, but the chief architect for "Limbo", some fellow from England, had a longtime dream to see a game produced by him sold in public. It was a labour of love for 10 years, and clearly his enthusiasm overwrote any common sense. I don't believe they were trying to pull a fast one & deliberately rip-off those games; naivety got the better of them & used these assets not knowing the trouble it would cause.

In fact, were it not for a random small-scale gaming site reviewing the game, no one would have known. I understand the money that went into making & publishing "Limbo" came straight from that dude's pocket. The publisher didn't know about until the fuss was kicked up.

I have seen much worse, and more deliberate thievery in the amateur mod scene tbh; blatant cases of people passing off other peoples work as their own. The only thing "limbo" is guilty of is outstanding naivety.

Maximilian

Its an amazing story. RPS ran a rather funny competition about this recently.

Check it out.

0ubliette

this gave me some lulz






(its the developers btw)

Kiith

pixelburp wrote: »

I feel sorry for these guys, I genuinely do, they're being hauled over the coals for a cockup. I would have to dig out the old article, but the chief architect for "Limbo", some fellow from England, had a longtime dream to see a game produced by him sold in public. It was a labour of love for 10 years, and clearly his enthusiasm overwrote any common sense. I don't believe they were trying to pull a fast one & deliberately rip-off those games; naivety got the better of them & used these assets not knowing the trouble it would cause.

In fact, were it not for a random small-scale gaming site reviewing the game, no one would have known. I understand the money that went into making & publishing "Limbo" came straight from that dude's pocket. The publisher didn't know about until the fuss was kicked up.

I have seen much worse, and more deliberate thievery in the amateur mod scene tbh; blatant cases of people passing off other peoples work as their own. The only thing "limbo" is guilty of is outstanding naivety.

While i can feel sorry for them, from the sounds of the review, they stole stuff directly from other games, and so i can't feel too sorry for them

humanji

I'm sorry, but nobody who does something that stupid deserves sympathy. I mean, he just screen captured from a load of games and thought nobody would notice? Why kind of idiot is he?

And why the hell did it take 10 years to make? Was he just waiting for the right games to come out?

pixelburp

Kiith wrote: »

While i can feel sorry for them, from the sounds of the review, they stole stuff directly from other games, and so i can't feel too sorry for them

Well from what I gather, the guy was essentially working from his bedroom for that time, scrabbled together the money and got it published. Corners were probably cut & looking at screens where they obviously pilfered Diablo2 menu backgrounds among others so that to me suggests they just used stuff they found without thinking (google image search I bet - the pitfall of many web-design fookups)

The phrase "cockup before conspiracy" springs to mind; these guys were foolish at best, and idiotic at worst. But I don't think they are master criminals trying to pass off work as their own to earn their millions. It happens even in large dev houses - if I recall correctly, didn't STALKER get into bother for having doom3 assets in its build?

Just as an example of easy it can be to unknowingly use someone elses assets. The mod team I was a member of frequently got applicants to join claiming to be texture artists. They were DAMN good, but once we did some background checking of their work, we (somewhat accidently) discovered they were blatently stolen from elsewhere. Had we used them, we could have found ourselves with serious egg on our faces. Granted, this example is a little more extreme, but only because this amateur group sold their game.

As usual, the internet exagerrates something that essentially is nothing-news. Who had even HEARD of this game?

humanji

I still can't find it in me to feel sorry for him. He also apparently won £260,000 in a poker tournament a while ago, so he could of at least paid for someone to create some backgrounds for him Here's another pick from NeoGaf that shows he stole stuff when he was making the amiga version:

Maximilian

humanji wrote: »

I'm sorry, but nobody who does something that stupid deserves sympathy. I mean, he just screen captured from a load of games and thought nobody would notice? Why kind of idiot is he?

And why the hell did it take 10 years to make? Was he just waiting for the right games to come out?

Early versions of it looked like a crappy monkey island rip-off. I guess they were never able to finish it and went back to the drawing board a couple of times. Somebody else's drawing board of course.

humanji

Maximilian wrote: »

Somebody else's drawing board of course.

lol

johnny_ultimate

I think I lost any sympathy for them when the quality of the game became apparent. The trailer is hilariously bad: "Hello, is anyone there?", the static characters, or the I thought extinct portrait shots whenever you're talking to someone. I'm all for independent developing, but this is just on a different level: they surely fully understood what they were doing!

Oh, and apparently any attempts to contact the publisher or developer have failed: they are 'on vacation' apparently.

Dylan_James

Does no one else see the initials of the game?

*epic facepalm for all of you falling for this ****e.*

Maximilian

Ooh look! A review!

humanji

Dylan_James wrote:

Does no one else see the initials of the game?

*epic facepalm for all of you falling for this ****e.*

Lotl?

pixelburp

Laughing Out Totally Loud? Like?

monkeyfudge

Haha.. Guy Spy... I'd completely forgotten about that game.

Could never figure how so many guys were hiding inside that cable car.

ZorbaTehZ

What kind of fkin retard does something like this? Honestly...
There's been a wiki set up to document all the plagiarism.

MooseJam

how can you steal an entire room isn't that just output by the engine, would you not have to steal the engine too, I don't get it, did they just copy it by looking at it and building a very similar room by guesswork

steviec

MooseJam wrote: »

how can you steal an entire room isn't that just output by the engine, would you not have to steal the engine too, I don't get it, did they just copy it by looking at it and building a very similar room by guesswork

The game isn't 3D. The characters move around on 2D backgrounds that give the impression of 3D (like the old Resident Evil or Final Fantasy games)

So all they had to do was load up another game, get the angle they want, and press printscreen to get their background.

Amazing that they actually thought it was a good idea to do that though.

MooseJam

wow amazing wonder what they were thinking, I'm sure they will give interviews soon enough, would be good to hear their views

The Queen

You can't feel sorry for these guys - this isn't simply a case of a few copied textures - there's 30+ popular retail games ripped off here, and several movies, including Pirates of the Caribbean and Spawn - everything right down to the pointer mouse and interface is ripped from other games.

Truly mind boggling how they thought they'd get away with this - though the game seems to have done relatively OK for a year until a Euro/US deal was agreed....they should have left it at that!!

http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2904.msg18305#msg18305

humanji

The developers are now pleading ignorance innocence:

GameSpot wrote:

Limbo of the Lost devs respond to plagiarism charges
Studio accused of stealing from other games apologizes, says it was unaware that outsourced talent was submitting copied content.
By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot
Posted Jun 23, 2008 2:18 pm PT

Earlier this month, the PC adventure game Limbo of the Lost came under heavy fire for apparently copying artwork from other games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Thief: Deadly Shadows. When the initial story broke, the game's US publisher issued a statement saying it had no idea about the improprieties, and that attempts to contact developer Majestic Studios had been unsuccessful as the team was on break after finishing up the game.

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.

Limbo of the Lost is a point-and-click adventure game in which players guide protagonist Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs as he explores the realm of Limbo and The Keep of Lost Souls at its heart.

Kur4mA

Hmm, I call bull**** tbh!

Jack Sheehan

King of Limboooo!

johnny_ultimate

They're not so quick to boast about it being all their own work in the local newspaper anymore, ey

Jack Sheehan wrote: »

King of Limboooo!

Perhaps the icing on the cake to this story. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URcvdDtnM_0

Warning: moderately disturbing.

humanji

Kind of catchy.

fitz0

Wheres the song robbed from?

1:24 is that a Gollum ripoff?

pixelburp

Dear god my ears.

Man I wish I was deaf.