If you’re worth your salt in stalking good pixel art, you’ve probably seen GIFs and images of Planescape: Torment inspired RPG Death Trash floating around the web. Stephan Hövelbrinks’ unabashedly grotesque creation was born in the Summer of 2015 and has yet to confirm a release date. However, a recent case of plagiarism has manifested on Steam.
The rise of the copycats. This one has a Steam page and they don't even bother to come up with their own game description. … Whatever you do in life, don't be as shitty as these people. pic.twitter.com/9nTKhjlZDT
— Stephan Hövelbrinks (@talecrafter) February 26, 2018
FreeMinds’ ‘FukTopia’ defines itself as a “modern post-apocalyptic beat ’em up game”, but has directly lifted from the official Death Trash description, not to mention Stephan Hövelbrinks’ distinct visual style, right down to the logo. Granted, the gameplay on display is different, although the amount of source work used in the reproduction could be considered significant and constitute copyright infringement. Death Trash is still in development, and Hövelbrinks pointed out his concern over potential legal problems. Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail suggested contacting Steam to rectify the situation.
Death Trash isn’t the only case of art plagiarism to occur in the past few days. French cartoonist Kéké, who goes by Kekeflipnote on Twitter, discovered that his iconic bouncing pigeons had been used without his permission to create an iOS/Android action game called Pigeon Pop.
