Indie dev accused of using stolen FromSoftware animations removes them, warns others against trusting marketplace assets
The makers of the indie soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken have removed assets that were allegedly lifted from FromSoftware games(opens in new tab). Archangel Games says Epic Games has now removed the third-party listingsm from the Unreal Engine marketplace, but it still hasn't told the studio whether or not they were actually stolen.
The similarities were noticed almost immediately after Bleak Faith: Forsaken launched on March 10, and they weren't just kind of alike, they were virtually direct copies. For instance, below is a comparison of the claymore in Bleak Faith and the straight sword in Elden Ring. The positioning and timing is just about dead-on.
Archangel Studios denied the accusations of theft, saying the assets in question were purchased fair and square from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Later, one of the developers added that the team had submitted a ticket about the issue to Epic's customer service.
«We decided to be preemptive as a sign of good faith and a generally very pleased customer at the Epic Marketplace,» developer ubermensch42 said on Archangel's Discord. «We'll let you know what they say about it and will respond accordingly.»
Today Archangel announced that it received a reply from Epic, but it wasn't terribly informative:
«Pursuant to the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace seller represents and warrants to Epic that they have appropriate rights to upload their content. As with any store that hosts third-party content, however, Epic is not in a position to independently verify such rights, and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content.»
In other words, Epic either doesn't know or can't say whether the content being sold through the Unreal Engine Marketplace is legal
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