indie_games_studio and the EBOLA 2 fiasco

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Occular Malice

12 Jan, 2021 @ 7:30am

indie_games_studio and the EBOLA 2 fiasco

Well this is fun. A developer named indie_games_studio released a game recently called EBOLA 2.

https://steamhost.cn/app/1437050/EBOLA_2/

This came up in my feed but I didn't pay much attention to it. Looked pretty but this Resident Evil wannabe didn't look like anything worth noting. Then Zaxtor99 posted a video about how the video from this developers trailer was a direct lift from the Unreal Marketplace.

The original video is here outlining a lot of problems with that in one of his M.I.S.S series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKXc58ORlXI

Zaxtor left a negative review for the game but then got flack saying it was using stole video. Zaxtor then posted a follow-up review where he lays out where the video the developer stole came from, a direct lift from the asset publisher who created one of the assets used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJut3jn-jc

In the follow-up video Zaxtor finds the promotional video the asset publisher uses for their asset The Forest and it's used directly republished as the game video (the "developer" just slaps their game studio and game name over top of the asset publishers promotional video). Even the asset publisher (that Zaxtor had emailed about this) said this was unprofessional and inappropriate (stopping short of saying it's illegal but you get the idea).

This resulted in an update to Zaxtors review. I tried to post a link to his video to let people in that community know what was going on and, of course, was banned this morning (the developer has moderation on their forums, not sure if that's turned on by default?).

Anyways, wanted to post it here to let people know and check things out. The feeling is that this is not the only video this developer has lifted for their game trailer. There are other clips in their trailer (like an ambulance pursuit and zombies) that may or may not come from other Unreal game asset trailers (I'm a Unity developer so not fully up on what assets are out there for Unreal). Also could be stock footage from something like iStockPhoto, but again I don't know.

In any case, it's highly doubtful given the actions and attitude of the developer and existing evidence that very little of what's in their game trailer(s) is from the actual game at all.

Thanks

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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments

Mighty Maus 12 Jan, 2021 @ 7:44am

Sounds like the developer is a tool, and it's probably a good idea to just ignore that game and let him ruin himself.

Stefan8000 12 Jan, 2021 @ 11:03am

Hm, for me, it looks like the asset trailer is just a small part of the game trailer. I dont know the rights situation, maybe the dev thought, he can use the trailer when buying the asset pack. I know all games from that dev, some are bad, but some are ok and i am sure, he is not only uploading asset packs on steam.

Occular Malice

12 Jan, 2021 @ 12:43pm

Originally posted by Stefan8000:
Hm, for me, it looks like the asset trailer is just a small part of the game trailer. I dont know the rights situation, maybe the dev thought, he can use the trailer when buying the asset pack. I know all games from that dev, some are bad, but some are ok and i am sure, he is not only uploading asset packs on steam.

Yes however as I found while watching both the original trailer and the game one, he's deliberately cropped out the text from the promo trailer for the asset (where it has text saying what features the asset has) and put their own text in. I don't own the asset so can't say if the asset contains a scene or something where you could create the same trailer (i.e. camera movements, etc.) so from what I can observe the developer downloaded the trailer from YouTube, cropped it, and added their own titles. Also any assets I have purchased, they never include the promo trailer for the asset as part of the license.

There are other devs that have been highlighted on this group where they take an asset flip trailer and just trim off the titles and use it for their full game trailer. This isn't the case here as this games trailer is more than just the forest shot, however (and I haven't done the investigation here) I would be willing to guess many other parts of this game trailer are just assembled clips from the various assets they acquired for the game.

Zarkow 13 Jan, 2021 @ 5:13am

https://steamhost.cn/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&developer=indie_games_studio

Repackages assets as games, very little is of his own making, full example-levels used as game-levels in several games. And things are re-used (repackaged) into multiple games.

Well, atleast he is making money...