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Register, Others Call Plagiarism in "Limbo of the Lost" Game
Fallen Andy writes "'The Register' has an article describing 'Limbo of the Lost' (developed by Majestic and sold in the U.S by Tri Synergy) which seems to have 'borrowed' copiously graphics assets from other games. Over at the GamesRadar forum there is a thread with some screenshots. Finally, this game has its own Wikipedia entry. Warning to all — move the soft drink away from the keyboard and monitor before you look at
those screenshots. Blatant this is, very blatant indeed."
It's all screenshots from Oblivion, Thief 3, Unreal Tournament series, Diablo, and other games. Limbo Of The Lost doesn't render those things in 3D but uses it as background image for the adventure game. Really lame that the developers of that game thought they were going to get away with it. I wonder what was going on there, they couldn't find a graphics artist to draw the backgrounds so they just photoshopped screenshots from other games together. Still a bit of a shame for the (if there were any) good points of the game, that are now gone down together with the whole game due to this plagiarism.
"everything was re-written from the ground up, everything apart from the initial concept and some character design ...and the rest is history."
"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. This is the original concept, dusted off and re-created."
Also, the game has been in production for 10 years and rewritten few times. I think these guys deserve a "Hard core audacity" award...
Full Article
There are no 'Devs'. This was done by 3 con-men who apparently met a pub. If you dig though some of the links and other forums about this mess you can get more of the pathetic details.
They used an out-of-the-box-create-your-own-2.5D-adventure software and just imported in screenshots from other games. I don't think any of them know a lick about coding whatsoever.
It's amazing that these guys got published when some real independent shops with real talent can't get anything going.
FWIW, "Limbo of the Lost" is a 1990s-era point-and-click adventure game with static backdrops, and those backdrops just happen to be screenshots of other games.
Even if they hadn't plagiarized other games, I can't see anyone buying the piece of crap. Everything about it - plot, graphics, audio, game engine - reeks of amateurism.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
As an example, I am a Game Programmer that doesn't play video games, I just don't have time. I just bought a PlayStation 3 last week for the blu-ray, and it is the first gaming machine I've owned since the SNES.
I'm not saying the developers weren't in on it, I'm just saying the artists at my company could rip off the most famous games ever made and I probably wouldn't know about it.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Actually the game images are static. They are not 3D models, they are screenshots.
You may actually look into the story before you invent a situation where it was right. These guys are just amateurs who took a run at the shovelware market using plagiarism to fill in where they lacked talent. Much of the coding was done on the winter mute forums as these three douches don't know much about coding. The graphics where screenshots that were badly photoshopped together because this group lacked graphic talent. Apparently from people who played it, they also lacked story telling talent as well as voice acting talent. These guys really shouldn't have tried to market their dreck shovelware and should have kept it as a amateur project.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The trick was that they completed the game before seeking a publisher. If you seek out a publisher with a completed product, chances are you will find a deal there. The reason more developers don't do this is because the operating costs of funding the development of a game are so high. Not many people can fund a number of full-time employees out of their own pocket for the duration of a games construction.
These guys didn't have to worry about operating costs because they stole all their art assets and used a free-ware engine.