Elden Ring was allegedly plagiarized by the small indie studio behind Bleak Faith Forzaken. But he fights back.
Bleak Faith Forzaken, a purebred soul-like developed by a very small independent studio made up of a team whose members can be counted on the fingers of one hand, is currently being targeted. In fact, the developers are accused of plagiarism and even the animations for Elden Ring designed by FromSoftware were stolen. The studio has therefore spoken up.
Elden Ring would have been plagiarized… without doing it on purpose?
These allegations were reported on social networks this weekend. Users have actually noticed that the animations of Stupid Faith Forzaken was identical in all respects to that used by FromSoftware in Dark Souls 3 and Elder Ring above all.
A fact that is difficult to defend in that we can actually see that they are identical in every respect. As reported by Meowmaritus, modder known in the Dark Souls community for having developed software that accurately allows animations to be extracted from FromSoftware games.
The full studio answer
Le Studio Archangel, father of Stupid Faith Forzaken, was quickly harpooned and the developers finally gave their version of the facts. Yes, it looks like the animations are identical, but no, they didn’t steal anything at all. In any case, since these animations come from a pack of assets purchased from the Unreal Engine Store, they weren’t aware of it.
While writing this article, the developers revisited the case via a post shared on Steam and the game’s official Discord, specifically that the studio and its very small team remain transparent about asset purchases on official marketplaces like Epic. According to the developers, this will only make up about 10% of the game content.
Hi everyone, today we’re going to address some issues and provide some updates Bleak Faith: Abandoned.
First of all we would like to thank you all for your detailed and critical comments, we have a lot of work to do! Although it’s a small team, we’re working hard to fix bugs and glitches and improve the game. We’ve already released several fixes, and more major fixes are coming to improve your experience, including full controller support added in the coming weeks.
Coming back to the elephant in the room, we’ve come to realize that an allegation of asset theft has been made in relation to certain animations used in the game. As we’ve previously reported on our Discord community, we’ve always been transparent about purchasing certain items the Epic Marketplace that are appropriate for the game. As a three person studio, using the Epic Marketplace has helped reduce development time. Only about 10% of the game has been outsourced, including some animations, visual effects and audio.
We purchased these assets from Epic’s marketplace in good faith and know that Epic, like all sellers on their online store, went through a verification and verification process prior to selling the assets.
Although we cannot judge this, we are not aware of any violations as the seller passed all checks. However, we have contacted Epic and escalated a ticket with a request for investigation and confirmation. In the meantime, as we try to do what’s right for our players and other creators, we’ve already started fixing the issue, although Epic can’t find any issues.
We will of course keep you updated as soon as we know more.As indie creators, we are shocked and hurt by these allegations as our sole intention is to create an immersive RPG. We hope that through our transparency in our community’s Discord and our ongoing efforts to improve the game, we have shown and will continue to show our commitment to our players.
The entire team and I really appreciate all the issues and positive feedback you’ve brought us, and we hope you’ll continue to do so so we can continue to make the game the best it can be. We know that Bleak Faith: Abandoned will continue to improve and we are committed to both short and long term.
Thank you and good luck in the omnistructure!
A strange case
If the practice isn’t that uncommon in the industry, especially with independents, when studios have very small teams, it’s hard to imagine that developers haven’t noticed the similarities. Especially since their game is precisely inspired by the work of FromSoftware. It would therefore be surprising if no one played Dark Souls 3 and or Elder Ring at Archangel.
In addition, the studio was awarded social networks Using AI software to create concept art in particular, which is then retouched piece by piece by the developers.
Also, not everything has been retouched for the time being, although the game has been officially available on Steam since March 10th. There is still a lot to do, but the developers want to prove themselves. Patches will arrive shortly, especially to fix the animations that seem to be problematic. Be continued.