Games@lemmy.worldbyRoad_Warrior_10@lemmy.world
12 hours

I'm a dev who has been working on my game for 2 years and my game title got stolen on Steam and they plan to release before I do. What should I do?

English

I have been working for over 2 years on my game and 4 months ago I finally released my demo. Yesterday, while searching on Steam I found a game with EXACTLY the same title and very similar premise. The page was created in May or June 2026 and they aim to release in August 2026. Here are some of descriptions I use on my Steam page:

  • A first-person psychological thriller with a heavy atmosphere and elements of liminal horror.

  • Uncover the stories of your subjects by studying their personal items and darkest secrets before making life-or-death choices.

  • Will you sacrifice your own beliefs to obey HIS authority?

For comparison here is how they describe their game:

“Will you obey orders, or resist? In this first-person psychological horror game, you sit across from subjects and must investigate evidence to determine who is telling the truth, and decide their fate.”

My game is planned to release in October or whenever it’s completely playtested and polished. I’m not sure what I can do as this has never happened before, what do you think is my best course of action here?

For reference my game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2719670/The_Milgram_Experiment

And the copy: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4777470/The_Milgram_Experiment/

63
    • stegosaur@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      Yours looks way better, one small criticism that may be easy to adjust but could also just be the visual style you want: most surfaces look way too glossy and reflective.

      While it’s nice to have detailed reflections, things like the wall tiles just seem nearly like mirrors when it comes to light reflections. There’s no diffusion. Maybe the face masks could stay as glossy, but I would diffuse/dull the rest a bit. The ceramic tile but especially the padded room. Padded room tiles would be fabric so there really shouldn’t be any gloss and very little reflection.

      I hope you don’t take that the wrong way, and I think your game will stand out as far superior to the copy

    • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 hours

      Happened to bigger outfits. There is this board game “Settlers of Catan”, which should have been “Settlers” originally, until a computer game of that name got released just before they launched.

    • j4yc33@piefed.socialEnglish
      3 hours

      I have played the demo for your game, and while I don’t know if you can fight this, you’ll deffo be getting at least one sale!

    • alakey@piefed.socialEnglish
      5 hours

      You didn’t come up with the name and it’s perfectly realistic to imagine more than 1 person coming up with a similar idea based on the same concept. Even if someone “stole” your idea - do it better than them and you’ll have nothing to worry about. I’d be more understanding of your concern if a big AAA studio happened to make this release so close to yours, but even then not much you can do due to aforementioned reasons. And while Steam lets you use any name you want, even if it’s already taken, it will put your game first on the search list if more people interact with it, which will naturally happen if your game is good.

    • borth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5 hours

      I wish listed your game, I’ve been following it for some time, looks a lot better than the copy. I don’t think that copy will sell as much, and if you keep promoting and talking about it the way you already are, I think it’d be clear which one is the rip off.

      I think it’d be a good idea to give keys to some streamers to show the game. I might tell a few steamers to stream this, it seems like it would be fun to do this with an audience.

      • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4 hours

        Yeah, thank you! I am already sending my demo to streamers and of course when the full game is out I will send keys too

    • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      You’ll need to add onto your tile, to distinguish it from the rip-off version, so people know.

      And, doing what you’re doing here, getting the word out.

      You’ll be fine.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9 hours

      Unless you trademark the title you can’t do anything about it. And an international trademark cost a lot of money.

      I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The copy doesn’t look like a game that can compete. It looks very barebones. The Steam algorithm will bury this game because it won’t sell. You probably gave this game more publicity than it ever got before. Just focus on your own game the more wishlists you get the more the algorithm will push your game to customers and they will never see the copy.

      • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9 hours

        Thank you! Yeah I’m not sure my name can be trademarked, but just not worth the money spent. However I assumed Steam had a system that prevented using the exact same title

        • ober@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          7 hours

          Unfortunately not. Just look up “SCP Containment Breach” or even just “SCP” on Steam and you’ll see a whole mess of duplicates.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11 hours

      It’s been adjudicated before: you can’t. It’s the reason PUBG and Fortnite can coexist even though Epic completely ripped off PUBG after helping develop the game. It’s also why the “DOOM clone” genre was allowed to proliferate into the FPS genre, why there are so many FNAF-inspired games, and why Nintendo recently lost one of its Pokémon patents. You don’t own the concept of the Milgram experiment, you don’t own the trademark for the name, and the overall gameplay concept is not subject to copyright. Unless you can prove that the other developer stole code or art assets from you, or that it violated a trademark or patent that you own, there’s nothing you can do but hope that the better product wins in the end.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
        11 hours

        how is fortnite a rip off of pubg? That was one of the dumbest lawsuits ever I cant believe people actually repeat that bs.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8 hours

          During development, PUBG’s developers worked closely with Epic for technical support of the Unreal Engine. At the time, Epic was developing a multiplayer sandbox game that focused on building fortifications and area defense. It was a little-known title called Fortnite.

          PUBG launched into early access in March of 2017 and was an immediate massive success. Only half a year later, Epic launched Fortnite Battle Royale, which was a massive departure from the original Fortnite concept. It had the same genre as PUBG, it had the same game rules, the gameplay was nearly identical; and it retained barely anything from the original core gameplay loop of fortification-building. You’d have to be willfully ignorant on the level of flat earthers to think it’s all just an innocent coincidence.

          I don’t think Epic directly stole any of PUBG’s works, but I am absolutely certain beyond doubt that they took “inspiration” from PUBG the same way Richard Wagner took inspiration from Germanic mythology when writing his opera. Whatever abhorrent eldritch abomination Fortnite may be today, it started its life as a complete rip-off.

          • variouslegumes@reddthat.comEnglish
            5 hours

            PUBG wasn’t the first battle royale. There were a few before it. In that era every studio was making one.

            • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3 hours

              It was the first battle royale that anyone actually gave a shit about.

          • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
            7 hours

            Pubg wasnt the first or only battle royal game. There were others that were blowing up before and during. Fortnite season 1 wasnt at all a rip off. They implemented a simple game type popular in several games at the time. Pubg got greedy and thought they owned the entire genre because they were blowing up. Theres no evidence that fortnite battle royal was released due to snooping by epic staff.

              • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                6 hours

                I’m curious how they’d respond to this… as far as I know, there were a handful of mods for other games that kinda did the concept but no actual games, certainly not the way any games do BR after PUBG’s release. H1Z1? But not really, as PUBG’s creator did a lot of that…

                the closest things would probably be last-man-standing shooters but those aren’t BR games.

                • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  5 hours

                  H1Z1 is probably the technical first but I seem to recall that BR mode didn’t take off because the game had too much jank to be fun.

        • d00ery@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11 hours

          Third person view battle royale. Having only ever seen videos of Fortnite the difference is primarily art style.

          • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
            10 hours

            Damn didnt realise a viewing angle and type is all you needed. Someone tell all 2d platformers that they’re clones.

            • Dashi@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8 hours

              I mean Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld for awhile was “throwing a spherical object” to catch things. Game IP law can get stupid.

              • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
                7 hours

                Yeah and what was the correct response to Nintendo

            • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8 hours

              This is what it sounds like when people defend the Steam monopoly btw.

          • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8 hours

            Jesus Christ, now I have to make a new account to double downvote you; one for the shitty take, and one for unnecessary single-letter censorship.

    • daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      I’m excited to play your game, not some shitty clone. I’ve seen this happen with another indie horror game that I can’t remember the name of. I don’t have a solution unfortunately. As long as yours comes up first in search than you shouldn’t have anything to worry about anyway.

    • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
      12 hours

      I guess it’s too late to change the name of the game, but when you think about it, the “clone” is a shitty game that won’t get a lot of downloads if any. I’m only a gamer, but your whole Steam page is way more enticing.

      You could create a small website with links to the Steam page (and Bluesky and Twitter…) as a reference. The other guy won’t waste more time on his project. I saw your Posts history on Lemmy, and you have a lot of upvotes and conversations about that game, it’s something that the clone guy cannot reproduce easily, he would be roasted very fast if he tried that.

        • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
          11 hours

          Yes, too late to change the name, but it’s a stupid idea, you have way more momentum and hype than the other guy. Don’t bother about him.

    • pasdechance@jlai.luEnglish
      8 hours

      Your game looks considerably better.

      I would not want my work to be confused with another’s.

      Even so, a non-litigious option is to contact the dev to propose a bundle.

      The “Experiments” Bundle?

    • bryndos@fedia.io
      11 hours

      https://steamcommunity.com/dmca/create

      But be warned that it might tie up both games in bureaucracy. You might hope that steam has the timestamps readily available to prove the sequence of events - though I’m a bit skeptical of cloud storage about that stuff. So you might want your own evidence from your own storage.

      It’d be good to try to find someone who has gone through it on steam, and of course a lawyer, if you can afford it.

    • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11 hours

      I added yours to my wishlist, though I don’t intend to play it cause horror doesn’t sit well with me on account of how I’m a giant wuss but I still support artists, and I put theirs on my ignore list.