You may remember the above Superman demo from earlier in 2022 (shared by our own YouTube channel here). It was an Unreal Engine 5 demo of a fantastic-looking Superman title. A Superman Style Flight Experience (UE5) was a project from Australian developer TJATOMICA (developer Tyson Butler-Boschma) that did something that games like Superman 64 and others like it never could – make the ability to play as Superman in a video game world something to enjoy. Of course, it was built upon the DNA of other projects, namely Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens Project City. The demo was celebrated by the masses, and then picked up by many on Butler-Boschma’s itch.io page, but now, suddenly, Butler-Boschma is under threat, with some of the internet’s worst, stealing the demo and enforcing copyright claims against him on both YouTube and Steam.
Taking to Twitter, Butler-Boschma shared the news of the theft to his followers highlighting the copyright claims against him on YouTube, saying
The team that stole my free superman demo and are selling it on Steam, are now copyright claiming my content on YouTube as well… They are straight up attacking and harassing me at this point and I don’t feel safe providing my personal information for a counter claim… I am at a complete loss at this point… Steam has done nothing and now I feel the same will happen with Youtube…
Butler-Boschma also took to the Steam page for the stolen demo, titled “Heroes City Superman Edition”, sharing the full story behind the situation for any prospective buyers to check out in a review of the game. Hero Game Studios, the “developer” of the project responded to Butler-Boschma’s review claiming that they stole nothing, and it fact everything attached to the project is their own work, saying
Our game is not stolen. One of the former developers of our user team TJATOMICA he left our team a long time ago. but now he claims that the entire project belongs to him. but this is completely false. The game’s rights and development process belong entirely to us.The reason why he did this is because the sales were increasing quite rapidly. He thinks he can make money from it.
He is constantly sending us messages on twitter, saying that he will try to take this game from us.
Please don’t believe what he wrote.
While the case is extremely clear cut here, the insistance of Hero Game Studios to dig in their heels is fascinating. Since going public on social media, prominent figures in the development scene such as Rami Ismail have signal-boosted the post in the hopes that the relevant figures at both Steam and YouTube see it and act.
A Superman Style Flight Experience (UE5) can be legitimately played without passing money onto fraudulent developers through Butler-Boschma’s itch.io page now.
