An amazing Superman demo that was made in Unreal Engine 5 by an indie developer was stolen and sold on Steam as a $10.99 game, according to Eurogamer.
Fortunately, the incident gained traction across major news outlets, thus, the copyright claim on the developer's YouTube video has been resolved. After two weeks, Valve pulled out the game from Steam.
Developer Claims Scammers Sold Stolen Version of His Demo
In April this year, indie developer Tyson Butler-Boschma released an awesome Superman-style flight experience that was built in Unreal Engine 5.
It was built using Epic's The Matrix Awakens' city. Butler-Boschma replaced Matrix elements. To give gamers an idea of what a future superhero game could look like on Unreal Engine 5, he inserted a Superman-like character in the video.
According to the developer, he made the project "for fun," as he would like to show what could be possibly made in Unreal Engine 5.
The developer made Superman playable demo freely available via itch.io. However, on November 1, he was alerted that a developer calling itself Hero Games Studios had taken his demo and started selling it on Steam as Heroes City Superman Edition.
According to Ars Technica, the scammers managed to sell a stolen version Butler-Boschma's demo on Steam for weeks without his permission. Likewise, there was no initial action from Valve.
Butler-Boschma's initial move was to urge his followers to retweet his issue and report the game on Steam.
However, despite his best efforts, Heroes City Superman Edition continued to be sold on Steam.
He decided to take it to Steam discussion boards to caution potential purchasers that the game was stolen. However, Hero Game Studios banned him using the reason of "hate speech".
He then decided to purchase a copy of Heroes City Superman Edition in order to leave a Steam review that the game was a scam. Through this, he could more details about his story.
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Hero Games Studio Claims Their Game is Not Stolen
Before the game was removed from Steam, Hero Game Studios responded to Butler-Boschma review, claiming that their game Heroes City Superman Edition is not stolen.
Hero Game Studios claimed that TJ ATOMICA (Butler-Boschma's user name on Twitter and Steam) is one of their former developers who left their team a long time ago. Now, he is claiming that the entire project belongs to him, according to the game studio.
Moreover, the game studio claimed that the game's rights and development process belong entirely to them and TJ ATOMICA is just claiming the game as his because the sales were increasing rapidly and he wants to make money from it.
However, Butler-Boschma said that he has no idea who Hero Game Studios is, as per Ars Technica. Likewise, his LinkedIn lists show that he has no affiliation with the company.
According to the developer, another reason why he bought the game on Steam is to check if it is the same with the demo that he made. He found out that the opening level is the one he created from scratch. It also include a message he wrote about how the demo works.
Upon seeing this, Butler-Boschma said that he was able to confirm that the game is the project that he made and this developer "just downloaded, stole, and passed this work off as their own."
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