What if you make a clone?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

I’m wondering if you could make (or remake) old popular game and give it original title, will it still break some ownership rules?
I mean, look at Dark Souls and Lords of the Fallen. Fallen is basically Souls clone with original title, minus online gameplay.

2

Game mechanics can de facto not be copyrighted. So as long as you do not copy/remake names, story or art assets from another game you are safe. Level or puzzle design is a gray area. If they are too similar close you could be in trouble.

(Not a lawyer.)

3

So how come Lords of the Fallen creators are not sued yet?

4

Is there any examples of Lords of the Fallen copying something without changing or tweaking it?

5

Well yes, the whole combat system is exactly the same. Just slower and clunkier.

6

Facepalm…

7

That’s not a big change. It’s a clone. Making animations go slower is not a big change. Everything else is like 99% the same.

8

If they stole code and animations directly from From Soft it would be illegal. If they just replicated it in their own way, it’s legal.

Dark Souls is very similar to Monster Hunter in combat.

9

Thanks for clearing it out. Much appreciate it.

10

You mean like the whole industry have been doing for decades?!

11

Activision makes a clone every year, its called COD

12

Yes, exactly! =)

13

But… CoD is their Franchise :smiley:

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YES, you can Copy GAMEPLAY! (no asset-stealing!)

BUT… be prepared to get some Flame if you go on Steam with it… People will see that you more or less directly ripped of Game XY, and this is something that People on Steam do not like. (and then… there is Jim Sterling -.-)

14

Thanks for the bad memories.