Bleak Faith: Forsaken Speaks Out Over Alleged Theft of Elden Ring Assets

Since Dark Souls came out in 2011, many developers have taken inspiration directly from FromSoftware’s games and tried to capture the soul-like charm.

Archangel Studios’ Bleak Faith: Forsaken is no exception, with a gritty, unforgiving world and lots of hard-fought combat we’re all crazy about. However, it is claimed that Bleak Faith: Forsaken may have used stolen assets from 2022’s best game of the year, Elden Ring (thanks PushSquare). That said, it does seem like a huge misconception and a learning curve for developers.

Meowmaritus, a Dark Souls modding tool developer, shared the discovery on Twitter. Their tweet was accompanied by a side-by-side clip of Bleak Faith: Forsaken and Elden Ring, and it’s safe to say the footage didn’t look good for Archangel Studios.

“Bleak Faith: Forsaken uses 100% animation ripped directly from Elden Ring 1:1,” the tweet read. “I don’t condone people using my DS Animation Studio software to help export animations for inclusion in commercial products, or to sell them on the Epic Games Store.”

Meowmaritus later stated that they had no problem with the developers being inspired by FromSoftware’s work, stating that “none of these games use text assets inside FromSoft games. They are big FromSoft fans and are heavily referenced.”

In response to the allegations, Archangel Studios shared a statement on its Discord via user uberfaith42. “We’ve been transparent about using the Epic Marketplace to make good animations that fit our theme. I did the rest, but we just needed more variety, and since I’m not an animator by trade, I had to work for this game study.”

“The only other stuff I use from the Epic Marketplace is generic VFX, which is a waste of time because I’m going to be making something that looks pretty much the same anyway.” They later say, “The whole world is built by hand. So, approximately 10% of art is outsourced, and AAA companies outsource about 70% of art.”

Archangel Studios has since stated that it has been in touch with Epic customer service, but is completely unaware of any similarities between the assets they purchased and those used in FromSoftware titles. Ultimately, the studio decided to remove and replace the animation assets after Epic responded with the following:

“Pursuant to the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace seller represents and warrants to Epic that they have the proper rights to upload their content. However, like any store that hosts third-party content, Epic cannot independently verify such rights, nor does Epic The purchaser provides such a warranty.”

This essentially means that the copyright status of purchased assets cannot be verified. So the developers of Bleak Faith: Forsaken are doing the only thing they should: removing and replacing assets.

“Of course, this is a huge lesson for us, and hopefully other indie creators, not to buy these storefront assets in good faith,” shared Archangel Studios. “Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention and helping us improve the game.”

All in all, it’s a bad situation for Bleak Faith: Forsaken. It’s certainly a lesson learned, and at least it’s good to see developer Archangel Studios responding so proactively when things came to light.