(Contributors: Tom Ohle - CD Projekt RED, Rich Carlson - Digital Eel, Eric Holmes - Radical Entertainment, and Game Trust members Evan Narcisse, Gus Mastrapa, David Chapman and James Fudge)
We continue our countdown of the Top 21 News Stories of 2008, with #14 - #7, starting now. If you missed the first part of our countdown featuring David Chapman, James Fudge and ECA President Hal Halpin, you can check it out right here.
Print To Fit continues with more on the Limbo of the Lost saga..
Where oh where do I begin when it comes to Limbo of the Lost? This little point and click budget title wouldn’t have even been so much as a blip on the proverbial radar under most circumstances. The game, developed by a trio of friends under the name Majestic Studios, was on the fast track to the bargain bin when the folks over at GamePlasma popped it in and saw something that looked eerily familiar.
A quick check of the game showed that the developers, who had been quote in a hometown paper as having “researched, wrote, designed, animated, scripted and developed the whole game from home,” actually did something more akin to stealing, swiping, hijacking, and blatantly plagiarizing the whole game from home.
Screenshots started pouring in from all over showing instances of assets used in the game being ripped off of a host of other games. Side by side comparisons showed direct cases of LotL swiping from games such as Oblivion, Thief and Thief II, Unreal Tournament (as well as UT 2k3 and 2k4), Diablo 2, and many many more. Things got so bad that the composer for the game felt compelled to issue a press release stating that he had been outsourced to create the original score for the game, but had no hand in the development of it. Limbo of the Lost’s publisher, Tri Synergy, also issued a statement saying that it was pulling its distribution of the game and was investigating the plagiarism claims against Majestic.
My question for the guys at Majestic is simple. Did you REALLY think no one would notice? For crying out loud, we’re talking about an audience that has been known to break apart the coding of games to find the tiniest clues about a game’s development process. And this? Hell, it took a huge set of brass cojones to swipe from some of the biggest names in PC gaming. That’s like me redubbing Star Wars and trying to pass it off as my own personal sci-fi epic. In one fell swoop, the guys at Majestic have turned themselves into the Milli Vanilli of the game industry.
While I agree that this sort of behavior shouldn’t be swept under the rug, one thing that really gets my goat about this is that the game is getting more press and demand now than it ever would have if no one had ever picked up on the scam. How long do you think it’ll be before those unpublished copies start turning up on eBay? Majestic may actually make more money for themselves hocking this as a collectible than they ever would have on store shelves.
And there you have it ? once again, the biggest stories of the week. Sarcasm fortified and condensed in an easy to swallow package. As always, keep checking the Crispy Gamer website every week for the latest up-to-date news stories as they happen. And be sure to come back here each weekend to get your weekly recap, in a variety of unique flavors.
This story, not unlike the film The Van, might have had a feel-good, happy ending to it if not for the devious behavior of the men involved. I am speaking of Majestic Studios and the backstory behind the creation of their game, Limbo of the Lost. An old news story in a local paper about three mates with a dream of making it rich illustrates how this whole ordeal could have been a success story instead of a tale of deceit and theft.
The story, which was published in the Kent Messenger on May 2nd was titled “Pub pals pin hopes on US game success,” and told the tale of three local blokes who had big dreams. The story detailed three Maidstone residents - Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis - who had just finished work on a new PC adventure game called Limbo of the Lost, a game that had apparently been in varying stages of production for nearly ten years.
“Between the three of us we researched, wrote, designed, animated, scripted and developed the whole game from home,” Francis told the paper.
Of course later revelations would reveal that Mr. Francis and friends might have had a little help developing certain assets for their first computer game. A comparison by GamePlasma would later reveal that Majestic Studios had in fact stolen assets from multiple games including Oblivion and Thief.
Since that story broke, U.S. publisher Tri Synergy dropped the title and the developers have apparently gone into hiding.
It’s a shame really, because these fellows could have made a good start in the industry if they had just done the work in the first place. If there is one lesson to be taken away from this story it is that you can’t fool gamers.
Source: Kent Messenger
