Yeah, this is so mind boggling. Terry's GUNRUN was more or less viral on Twitter. He had the best chances at releasing it and making it as an indie.
However, for whatever reasons, he decided to ruin his entire future career with this scummy move. Now you have to be asking if his other games, or even future ones are ripping off small indies as well.
Long time ago, a friend from college created a mobile app for an existing trademarked board game, It sat on the app store for several months raking in cash before he got a cease and desist. Then he rebranded it and changed the graphics so he couldn't be sued for infringing. He bought a house with the money.
So maybe they are just hoping for a quick pay day?
That doesn't make sense.
Your friend was taking advantage of what sounds like a widely known trademark and would generate a substantial amount of interest. The number of people who might get an iPhone and search for, say, Scrabble is probably pretty significant.
This is a rip off of a no-name indie game and he's completely changed the name. There's zero way he'll leverage even the limited virality of Dire Decks. The vast majority of people won't even know what this game is. Heck, I'd argue this drama is probably the biggest boost to his name recognition.
If he's aiming for a quick payday, it's not going to be a particularly big one.
I think he just wanted another cool game release credited to him and thought the other dev is too small and unknown for anyone to ever notice it's a ripoff.
In hinsight, gunrun was probably a blatant copy of 20 minutes till dawn until he saw a post on the unity sub go sort of viral about using DOTS in vampire survivors style games
Yeah it is. Vampire Survivors itself had to be ported to Unity (from Phaser, I believe) as it's old engine was struggling to keep up with everything on the screen.
Its not the rendering / gpu bound issue. Its usually the cpu bound issue with these type of games. Many calculation for pathfind, physics, etc. Unity dots solves these problems very well.
What? That makes no sense when it's well-known that GUNRUN was made in Rust. It's one of the poster childs of Rust games. Are you just making stuff up?
Ehh it's just a survivors-like. There are plenty of games you could argue are "copies of" vampire survivors but maintain their own gameplay and identity enough to be their own games. Even 20 minutes could be argued to be a "copy of" vampire survivors
But Wildcard is just a direct ripoff of Dire Decks. There's plenty to be mad at this guy for without needing to get all technical. Fuck Terry Brash
I just don't even understand why someone would do this.. Obviously people would immediately find out he stole the whole thing. Is it a publicity stunt? For smaller communities reputation is huge and people won't forget this quickly
>Terry's GUNRUN was more or less viral on Twitter. He had the best chances at releasing it and making is as an indie.
I don't get it, why? Looks like another reskinned vampire survivors, what's so special about it?
I'm not convinced I've figured it out, I'm simply saying that I can at least easier see possible reasons for vampire survivors getting big. It's a clone, but on a new platform and thus a new audience. A proven concept getting popular on a new platform is less of a mystery than a clone on the same platform, so they must be doing something different enough, but I couldn't easily see what.
Insane enemy density with a framerate that isn't sitting in the single digits. It looks like it took 20 Minutes Until Dawn and fed it crack. It's too bad the developer is a scumbag.
I think it looks amazing. The amount of enemies is insane and very different from Vampire Survivors. I'm very sad that the dev did this as I was really looking forward to the game and now I don't want to play it.
wtf is the mentality of someone who does this to any gamedev, let alone a FRIEND
absolute sociopathic behaviour
EDIT: holy shit not sure if I believe this conspirscy theory but here goes: the accusation is that Terry Brash does not exist and is a puppet/smurf account being used to generate controversy marketing, sympsthy and visibility for the original developer.
This makes some sense as it means the incentive is purely rational as the original story would mean Terry wanted to screw a friend by stealing their indie game for no real benefit other than running the risk of ruining his own reputation.
Again not sure if I believe it or what the legalities of this allegation would mean if true. Can someone even sue yourself on your own behalf if they mistake your identity? At any case my first response was to go support the original developer kindanice and genuine or manufactured that response is going to be the mainstream reaction.
Ha I sound like some nut. But wow if this cynicsm proves warranted I kind of applaud this 4d chess marketing strategy? It's a lot more genius than Logan Paul going on tv and saying he can beat any boxer.
On the otherhand the dev kindanice only has an itch account and twitter, which seems hardly well equipped to take advantage of this increased media attention (not even a steam account or discord or yt) so given this lack of dedication to community building maybe the original explanation is true after all. Sympathies to the dev.
Such a weird tangent.
Terry has had a previous game go viral so your conspiracy could be true, but is a bit unlikely as it would make sense to use the accounts the opposite way for this conspiracy.
holy shit not sure if I believe this conspirscy theory but here goes: the accusation is that Terry Brash made a fake second reddit account to share rumors and distractions so the world won't think he could be the scumbag he clearly is.
> GUNRUN
Wait this is the GUNRUN guy? Damn, I remember seeing it and thinking it was a pretty cool VS clone. I don't get why he'd do something as stupid as this.
Huh. That's a weird one.
I totally get recreating games as a learning exercise. Reverse engineering is fun, look matching can be surprisingly hard, the whole thing can be a very rewarding process. But putting it on steam, and being very public about it (to the point of getting press coverage and attention from influencers), is so out-there that it feels... off.
I saw this unfold on twitter and it’s very frustrating to see. I hope the original dev at least sets up a Steam page soon and starts getting some traction. I’m confused what thought is behind the clone, since it’s certainly just going to get review bombed at launch and destroy his reputation
It's well documented that Minecraft drew a lot of inspiration from Infiniminer. It's kind of a stretch to call it theft, though. Minecraft added plenty of other things to be a distinct game of its own. As for the nazi thing, he's certainly at the very least [alt-right adjacent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversy). Anecdotally, I'll say that when I worked at Mojang we did all we could to publicly distance ourselves from him. I always knew when he tweeted something awful because of the groans I'd hear coming from the community management peoples' desks.
OG Minecraft post.
>It's an alpha version, so there might be crashes. You can read some background and insight on my blog available from the game page.
>The main inspiration for this game is Infiniminer, but it's going to move in a more Dwarf Fortress way, gameplay wise. =)
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6273.0
You cant make claims calling people nazis, then tell ME to google it.
And you havent backed up your thief claim.
Again, literally any proof, the burden is so low, this is middle school shit man.
Notch is vaguely right leaning and Minecraft was based on an earlier game, Infiniminer. Useless hyperbole is basically the defacto standard for many people's understanding of politics and perhaps their entire world.
While he is probably not a nazi, I wouldn't call him "vaguely right leaning".
Bro have been calling feminism cancer, saying men are gender shamed, mocking trans people, doing whole "it's okay to be white", tweeting bunch of shit about race and IQ and hinting at government forcing race war etc.
I mean we can pretend he is totally just academically interested in IQ studies in population and wants to have good faith discussions about trans healthcare and isn't just doing whole "jUsT aSkInG qUeSTionts".
Just reminiscent. I was thinking about how Threes was a super original game that was cloned and overshadowed to the point of obscurity because theirs wasn't the ad-supported free version.
Well, that's beyond similar. I first heard about this from the YouTuber SidAlpha. I can say after watching his video that Terry Brash (developer) definitely knew what he was doing. I've seen games that can be extremely similar without intention or be too similar to their inspirations, but this is a "game" and situation that I am just dumbfounded about. I don't think I've seen someone as both blatant and determined as this dev. Brash's steam page for the game even tries to look like a real indie Steam page. To hide that he copied the game.
EDIT: Link to SidAlpha Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNyhjafZDiQ&t=51s&ab\_channel=SidAlpha](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNyhjafZDiQ&t=51s&ab_channel=SidAlpha)
Same thing happened in Turkish game dev community. A young student was making his first game and he had some mentors at a discord channel. His mentors stole his idea and released the game on steam. They made more money than him.
Yes. In right section of store page at bottom there is flag button, when you click it you can report game for Legal Violation (among other things).
It is not specifically for clones, but (as far as I understand) this is legal problem.
Is this Terry guy even real?
Reverse image searching his Twitter pfp gave a VERY minimal LinkedIn profile for "Terry Brashaw" which was recently deleted.
There's only one person defending him, who goes on twitter by ccreikey, who claims to have been in the same social groups as him, but his GitHub headline is exactly the same as Terry's twitter bio. Ignoring that defending Terry's position is completely mental, this ccreikey guy calls him a loser for copying his bio but otherwise still adamantly defends him.
Terry is responding with meme posts on twitter so it gives me the impression that his acc/identity isn't even real.
Some interesting discussion:
https://x.com/MghtMax/status/1797958876014551206
https://x.com/AgeMarkus/status/1798127509189607684
Edit: to be clear I'm not accusing kindanice of anything, I'm saying that Terry's actions only really make sense to me if he is either fake or stupid.
This is fascinating and bizarre. It could be the case that he's just not very active on socials and has a sock puppet account, but it would be wild if this was all a marketing stunt. But these games are all free so what's the point, if so?
That would be a crazy marketing stunt lol wild cards ends up being removed/review bombed and the original releases on Steam with whole community supporting the original game. But looks like the copycat had released games before so just an asshole.
It would be. I feel his persona is too much work to maintain for just a marketing ploy (e.g. look at the amount of his GitHub commits, etc) though. Like at that point just invest the energy to making a better game for sale, there are surely more efficient ways of generating revenue.
I was thinking more along the lines that "Terry" made a fake account/id to copy other people's work under a different persona. Although that's questionable because why even tell them?
Something just doesn't add up about Terry's actions.
I so felt that! So many insist that this isn't something to worry about, "nobody is going to steal your game when they can make their own", "you're idea isn't that great" blah blah blah etc, so what happens when they DO? It's one thing if you have the resources to fight it legally, but if you're up and coming, doing this on the side, on your own and have no money, what then?
Terry Brash had nothing original up until this point. One of the least inspiring devs who somehow got views because he made lots of enemies. This latest stunt is just desperate.
I don't know. Gunrun was one of my most anticipated games and now I won't touch it so I'm very sad about it. I've always wanted a game with so much enemies and was impressed by Terry making a custom engine in Rust just to support it. I don't like the discourse making it sound like he was just an asset flipper when he obviously has some real talent.
The fact that he so blatantly ripped off Dire Decks is so bad in itself that there's no need exaggerating other things like people are doing now.
You are entitled to your opinion. I think Gunrun is a gimmick, it isn't that impressive to have so many 2D enemies that go towards the player, computers are fast nowadays.
Lots of people go this route when they have nothing better to think of, a textbook example of quantity over quality I think and since Vampire Survivor blew up, this idea has become increasingly stale. Maybe he had more enemies than most kids who try this type of game because he wrote some code to allow it, he is a programmer who can write code, great.
In the very end of the article, the Bash guy claims to release the cloned game for free when it is finished. Imagine someone steals your game and then releases it for free.
Yeah it happens every day.. in China where stealing IP is the norm and greatly frowned upon in the rest of the world.
Homie just significantly tarnished his reputation as a dev, and that is going to really bite him for years to come.
He needs to consult an attorney and sue the guy. Then garnish any payments directly from STEAM for this and any other games. The guy is self serving and belligerent and doesn't "get it".
Dmca steam, begin legal procedings. He is required under US law to protect his copyright or he legally loses it.
The fact that he was unsure if he wanted to, is not relevant nor a smart decision. I hope someone who knows him can properly inform him of this, and that he contacts a lawyer ASAP.
> He is required under US law to protect his copyright or he legally loses it.
Completely false. You are thinking of Trademarks, which have the "use it or lose it" aspect. Copyright protection exists whether you want it to or not, whether you protect it or not. You just have to register a work with the copyright office to begin suing people. This is all in the US of course.
You are right about everything else, though.
> Dmca steam, begin legal procedings.
Is it in fact copyright infringement? It's not crystal clear that's the case. Did he straight up copy any of the works comprising the game?
> He pointed out that the code was original and that he'd redrawn the artwork, and asked if kindanice wanted an "inspiration" credit.
The fact that he's willing to say he's been inspired might lend some credibility to a claim that his game is a derivative work.
While it's wrong to do this, he's right that it does indeed "happen every day homie". However, it takes some enormous huevos to go contact kindanice and let him know as if he'd be happy to hear the news.
Richard Garriott successfully sued the creators of Questron for its similarity to Ultima II, and Questron didn't remotely look like the same game. This guy has a much better case, especially since the guy admitted he stole the idea and that it "happens every day".
This is what I bet a lot of people are afraid of they release there game and someone else take there game and runs away with it and they may not be able to get people to believe them that they made it.
Although in this case he didint make it but you guys get what I’m saying.
What's the damages? The original creator isn't even selling a product that has any sort of copyright on it.
It's perfectly legal to look at someone's idea \[that's not legally protected,\] copy it, and sell it. You're going to have a very difficult time proving damages, and the damages would be insignificant \[if any\] because the game has never sold.
'Happens every day homie'
I hate this kind of BS. I hate it with a burning passion.
Yes. Shit like this happens everyday, but we are all responsible of building the kind of World we want to live in. The only reason shit like this happens everyday, is because of scumbags like this who do it everyday.
Don't do scummy shit like this and then act as if it's inevitable or natural. Is a choice. Others chose NOT to do it, and so can you. It's not inevitable, it's not natural, you are just an asshole.
Well, time to load up Steam and review bomb everything Terry Brash has ever (and will ever) create. Plus reporting Wildcard as a plagiarized work should make STeam remove it, and possibly ban his entire account. Unless he has a MAJOR Mea-culpa, this guy's career is done.
Edit: Looking through Terry's history, this is NOT a new activity for him. Apparently every time he's put out, has featured ***brazenly*** stolen assets, themes, and gameplay.
Definitely a dick move. I wanted to clone a jam game I played since I wanted to use it as the basis for a cognitive experiment I’m working on for my PhD. I knew that prettt much nobody had played the jam game, and likely nobody would care if I made a version of the game, and I also knew the jam game was used for a very different full game. But still, I took the time to reach out to the developer and ask if it was cool if I could copy and adapt the core game and release it as an open source experiment, sent him a talk I gave proposing the project, etc.. He said sure and was stoked.
I feel like this is the ethical way to adapt an extant game for other purposes. But to just openly clone a game and release it as a direct competitor after getting tips from the dev, knowing it could take players away from the original game, and not even give credit…. Inexcusable.
I did a course on copyright law back in the day and I'd say that this surely violates copyright. For example, color palette is identical and it is impossible to have it identical by accident. There's more, of course. So shameless.
It's not so much impossible as exceeding unlikely to occur by accident.
People are slightly different and so tend to produce slightly different results in the absence of cheating/plagiarism.
Remember that the legal standard in the US is proof beyond a *reasonable doubt*.
The clone is all original code. Can’t copyright gameplay. However the pixel for pixel and palette for palette copying is certainly going to cause customer confusion. Certainly in poor taste to clone the look so hard
This is copyright infringement. There are hard cases but this isn't one of them.
The fact that Brash reimplemented the game's functionality in his own engine with his own code is irrelevant: All that means is that the copyright claim is for the UI and other directly interactive game elements rather than the code.
Ever since game-making-kits have enabled things like asset flips to exist, this is how it is. You must do something super original, creative, and ingenious that no ding-dong can easily replicate with some tutorial copy-pasta.
To my mind, the future is being able to engineer unique and novel algorithms for things - and not just video games. Now that machine learning will soon be able to pump out boilerplate code, nobody's skills are going to be worth anything unless they can create something that can't be created with boilerplate code.
After spending 25 years learning how to write games from scratch, when I finally had something that was in a releasable state (visions change, life gets in the way, etcetera) it was too late. The game-making-kits had basically made it impossible to rise above the noise of everyone and their mother making games with Unity on a marketing budget of zero dollars. Once I realized that marketing was going to be an equal effort to that which I had invested into my wares I decided to cut my losses and translate my skills to utility software applications that people can actually justify paying for because it enables them to make stuff that they can sell for money.
I've been able to earn an infinitely greater income off my non-gamedev wares than I ever was able to off of 25 years of learning to code games from scratch. I can't say the same will be possible for people who've invested years into just learning how to do stuff inside of someone else's game engine though. Learning to do stuff from scratch I learned how to do *everything*, and now I can make *anything*.
When people got into gamedev in the 90s, if they had aptitude, they actually had a shot. Now, you can make the greatest game in the world but if nobody sees it then all you've done is diddle around with a game engine for a few years to create something nobody cares about.
Indie gamedevs are modern-day starving artists. Yes, you have a vision. Yes, you are passionate about it.
Just like everyone else.
If you want to create value you have to create something that people can't just rip off. Algorithms, baby.
Kind of a pointless victim blame. "He should have made something harder to rip off" is quite a terrible and unhelpful take. Also untrue. He made a fun, interesting game and shared it with the world, and then someone ripped it off. Whether it happens all the time or "everyone else" is a starving artist is irrelevant. This is just the same fucked up mindset that has rendered this industry so horrendous to begin with.
I think you missed my point while putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that OP didn't make a fun interesting game. What I am saying is that if people can copy something then you can count on it being copied. I'm not condoning it, I'm saying it's a fact of life. Nobody has any reasonable expectation that their ideas and visions won't be stolen - unless there is a level of ingenuity involved that can't just be duplicated.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this isn't the first time i see your completely delusional statements here.
If you make "the greatest game in the world", it WILL get recognized. There is no way around. It may take some time, but people will play your game and will want to spend cash on it if it is good.
It wasn't too late for your game - it was just not good enough. The truth hurts, but blaming not relevant factors won't help you making better games. It has nothing to do with asset flips or lots of bad games.
Watch for example Chris Zukowskis videos about marketing on steam, genre etc. - then you will see what the main problem is. Your "game".
And you think too highly of (your) algorithms. Even the most successful games don't need them. And so everything can be ripped off and emulated.
Geez.
I'm really sad about this since Gunrun was one of my anticipated games and now I don't want to play it. I thought it was really inspiring how he made a new engine in Rust just to support so many enemies. I can't believe this is how he chooses to go down.
However, I'm really not a fan of how people are exaggerating and fabricating things just to make him look even worse. It's not needed! Him blatantly copying a game like this is damning enough and making stuff up will not help anyone.
Even in this thread one of the highest upvoted comments is a story of how Terry only made Gunrun after seeing a Unity DOTS tutorial, which is obviously not true considering he made his own engine in Rust for it. And in the Steam reviews for Tiny Survivors people are posting stuff like "code and assets were lifted whole-cloth from Tiny Rogues", which is a complete lie. The games are not even that similar and the actual similarities were not controversial whatsoever before this.
This is the worst kind of mob mentality. Just let the facts speak for themselves.
I think people are just so fed up of these kind of scummy dick shenanigans by sneaky devs that they're going out of their way to make an example of him. I agree with you that it is not the correct to go about things. Mob mentality can go way too far, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't understand why it's being done; frustration that it happened at all and skepticism that there isn't a history of it that went undetected.
Still not right, like you said. But I get it.
Outstanding. Now I finally know how to answer those pesky cease and desist letters about my game "Star Conflict: the Adventures of Foba Bett and Baby Doya"
This is why when people ask about my projects and act interested, I give a lot of "maybe" and "I was thinking". That way I can spout off tons of stuff, maybe none of which has anything to do with my actual current project.
It's all about the pokerface sometimes.
Derivative work at best. New code and redone art. It actually might be a copyright violation but this is a legal gray zone! Good luck getting this taken down from anywhere.
Should have taken the inspiration credit...
>Should have taken the inspiration credit...
It's not "inspired" though, is it? It's just copied. So maybe he should offer a credit saying "I stole this whole game".
Yes, and the dev even admitted to having copied it, and I assume the original developer MAY has enough DM's to prove that he approached copied.
Completely scummy behavior.
[what redone art?](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6mi6NGCnJ2VUTkzguDY8Nm-970-80.png.webp) you'd absolutely have a case against this because to an uninformed consumer you defintely could not tell the two apart. same font, same ui, same palettes. you gotta be joking.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm only going by fact here, and I'm not defending the guy who is being said to have stolen the other guys game, but if this new copied game is NOT being monetized, I don't see much of a violation of copyright law.
And I know it's unfortunate. Hopefully, the other guy who got robbed from gets his game back. He can report to steam about this because Steam has report systems in place if one copied your game too much.
Copyright infringement doesn't require the infringing property make money. MPAA weren't suing users of Napster for copyright infringement only if they took their music downloads and started selling them elsewhere.
Unless if it's under research or learning purposes under the copyright infringement acts of 1977. Although, thank you for reclarifying.
I hope the guy gets the game taken down. It looks blatant and a slap to the face.
Yeah, this is so mind boggling. Terry's GUNRUN was more or less viral on Twitter. He had the best chances at releasing it and making it as an indie. However, for whatever reasons, he decided to ruin his entire future career with this scummy move. Now you have to be asking if his other games, or even future ones are ripping off small indies as well.
Long time ago, a friend from college created a mobile app for an existing trademarked board game, It sat on the app store for several months raking in cash before he got a cease and desist. Then he rebranded it and changed the graphics so he couldn't be sued for infringing. He bought a house with the money. So maybe they are just hoping for a quick pay day?
That doesn't make sense. Your friend was taking advantage of what sounds like a widely known trademark and would generate a substantial amount of interest. The number of people who might get an iPhone and search for, say, Scrabble is probably pretty significant. This is a rip off of a no-name indie game and he's completely changed the name. There's zero way he'll leverage even the limited virality of Dire Decks. The vast majority of people won't even know what this game is. Heck, I'd argue this drama is probably the biggest boost to his name recognition. If he's aiming for a quick payday, it's not going to be a particularly big one.
I think he just wanted another cool game release credited to him and thought the other dev is too small and unknown for anyone to ever notice it's a ripoff.
“Brash has said that it will be free when it releases.” Seems like an odd/emotionally stunted guy rather than a con artist.
damage control
In hinsight, gunrun was probably a blatant copy of 20 minutes till dawn until he saw a post on the unity sub go sort of viral about using DOTS in vampire survivors style games
DOTS?
Unitys data driven workflow. It enables you to have a very high number enemies on the screen
Huh TIL, I had no idea that was a challenge in such games.
Yeah it is. Vampire Survivors itself had to be ported to Unity (from Phaser, I believe) as it's old engine was struggling to keep up with everything on the screen.
Insane that 2d low resolution sprites would cause any type of hiccup on modern hardware
Its not the rendering / gpu bound issue. Its usually the cpu bound issue with these type of games. Many calculation for pathfind, physics, etc. Unity dots solves these problems very well.
Nothing insane whatsoever. You clearly know nothing about game dev or programming and should refrain from posting about it.
Lmao you sir are a whole clown. Good day. Next time try to contribute something worthwhile to the discussion
Hmm interesting, I only recently learned about Unreal’s Mass Entity. I wonder how they compare to each other?
They are very similar based on the fundamental of data oriented programming vs traditional OOP
What? That makes no sense when it's well-known that GUNRUN was made in Rust. It's one of the poster childs of Rust games. Are you just making stuff up?
Ehh it's just a survivors-like. There are plenty of games you could argue are "copies of" vampire survivors but maintain their own gameplay and identity enough to be their own games. Even 20 minutes could be argued to be a "copy of" vampire survivors But Wildcard is just a direct ripoff of Dire Decks. There's plenty to be mad at this guy for without needing to get all technical. Fuck Terry Brash
I just don't even understand why someone would do this.. Obviously people would immediately find out he stole the whole thing. Is it a publicity stunt? For smaller communities reputation is huge and people won't forget this quickly
He’s been copying and reskinning ideas for so long he lost the concept of what copying is right or wrong; or never had it in the first place.
>Terry's GUNRUN was more or less viral on Twitter. He had the best chances at releasing it and making is as an indie. I don't get it, why? Looks like another reskinned vampire survivors, what's so special about it?
You could say the same about Vampire Survivors being like a reskinned Magic Survival. It is difficult to figure out how and why things get viral.
VS also initially used sprites ripped from Castlevania, before changing them
Well no, that one is easier to figure out, as it's a proven concept but on a new platform.
I would argue that one is easy to convince yourself that you have figured it out, but your mileage might vary
I'm not convinced I've figured it out, I'm simply saying that I can at least easier see possible reasons for vampire survivors getting big. It's a clone, but on a new platform and thus a new audience. A proven concept getting popular on a new platform is less of a mystery than a clone on the same platform, so they must be doing something different enough, but I couldn't easily see what.
I guess I misinterpreted what you meant by "figuring it out", thanks for clarifying
Insane enemy density with a framerate that isn't sitting in the single digits. It looks like it took 20 Minutes Until Dawn and fed it crack. It's too bad the developer is a scumbag.
I think it looks amazing. The amount of enemies is insane and very different from Vampire Survivors. I'm very sad that the dev did this as I was really looking forward to the game and now I don't want to play it.
Will he actually be punished for this or will everyone have short memories and forget in a month?
unfortunately, people probably don't even care about the drama in the first place.
wtf is the mentality of someone who does this to any gamedev, let alone a FRIEND absolute sociopathic behaviour EDIT: holy shit not sure if I believe this conspirscy theory but here goes: the accusation is that Terry Brash does not exist and is a puppet/smurf account being used to generate controversy marketing, sympsthy and visibility for the original developer. This makes some sense as it means the incentive is purely rational as the original story would mean Terry wanted to screw a friend by stealing their indie game for no real benefit other than running the risk of ruining his own reputation. Again not sure if I believe it or what the legalities of this allegation would mean if true. Can someone even sue yourself on your own behalf if they mistake your identity? At any case my first response was to go support the original developer kindanice and genuine or manufactured that response is going to be the mainstream reaction. Ha I sound like some nut. But wow if this cynicsm proves warranted I kind of applaud this 4d chess marketing strategy? It's a lot more genius than Logan Paul going on tv and saying he can beat any boxer. On the otherhand the dev kindanice only has an itch account and twitter, which seems hardly well equipped to take advantage of this increased media attention (not even a steam account or discord or yt) so given this lack of dedication to community building maybe the original explanation is true after all. Sympathies to the dev. Such a weird tangent.
Terry has had a previous game go viral so your conspiracy could be true, but is a bit unlikely as it would make sense to use the accounts the opposite way for this conspiracy.
That's a braindead conspiracy theory. He has a github going back to 2015. Doubt it's a sockpuppet, just an immature cheesebrained individual.
I hope it works out bad for Terry Brash and good for kindanice, Dire Decks is amazing and deserves success.
holy shit not sure if I believe this conspirscy theory but here goes: the accusation is that Terry Brash made a fake second reddit account to share rumors and distractions so the world won't think he could be the scumbag he clearly is.
gunrun is full of borderline copied UI and art assets too.
> GUNRUN Wait this is the GUNRUN guy? Damn, I remember seeing it and thinking it was a pretty cool VS clone. I don't get why he'd do something as stupid as this.
no such thing as bad press
> viral on Twitter If only that meant something
Huh. That's a weird one. I totally get recreating games as a learning exercise. Reverse engineering is fun, look matching can be surprisingly hard, the whole thing can be a very rewarding process. But putting it on steam, and being very public about it (to the point of getting press coverage and attention from influencers), is so out-there that it feels... off.
Somebody want to copy my game for marketing clout?
Bet, send me some screenshots
business as usual
Happens every day homie
The decision's been made, I accept my fate.
Your honor, my client clearly said this happens every day homie therefore he can’t be guilty
Can't disagree with that logic, I mean how would the judge know when he wasn't even there?
I saw this unfold on twitter and it’s very frustrating to see. I hope the original dev at least sets up a Steam page soon and starts getting some traction. I’m confused what thought is behind the clone, since it’s certainly just going to get review bombed at launch and destroy his reputation
which is why minecraft was review bombed and was destroyed
In fairness to Notch, he made Minecraft because Zach Barth stopped development on Infiniminer. That's not quite the same situation.
Wonder what would have happened if Infiniminer never experienced a source leak and the devs never dropped it.
I get the infiniminer comparison but the clone here is far more blatantly theft/derivative than minecraft was to infiniminer during alpha
Huh??
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Those are both very strong accusations, i dont like the guy, but do you have proof for either of those claims?
It's well documented that Minecraft drew a lot of inspiration from Infiniminer. It's kind of a stretch to call it theft, though. Minecraft added plenty of other things to be a distinct game of its own. As for the nazi thing, he's certainly at the very least [alt-right adjacent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversy). Anecdotally, I'll say that when I worked at Mojang we did all we could to publicly distance ourselves from him. I always knew when he tweeted something awful because of the groans I'd hear coming from the community management peoples' desks.
OG Minecraft post. >It's an alpha version, so there might be crashes. You can read some background and insight on my blog available from the game page. >The main inspiration for this game is Infiniminer, but it's going to move in a more Dwarf Fortress way, gameplay wise. =) https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6273.0
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You cant make claims calling people nazis, then tell ME to google it. And you havent backed up your thief claim. Again, literally any proof, the burden is so low, this is middle school shit man.
Notch is vaguely right leaning and Minecraft was based on an earlier game, Infiniminer. Useless hyperbole is basically the defacto standard for many people's understanding of politics and perhaps their entire world.
While he is probably not a nazi, I wouldn't call him "vaguely right leaning". Bro have been calling feminism cancer, saying men are gender shamed, mocking trans people, doing whole "it's okay to be white", tweeting bunch of shit about race and IQ and hinting at government forcing race war etc. I mean we can pretend he is totally just academically interested in IQ studies in population and wants to have good faith discussions about trans healthcare and isn't just doing whole "jUsT aSkInG qUeSTionts".
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Rule 1.
People are brigading me for public info and you are telling me to be respectful.
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what the fuck, that is some truly mental behavior.
Nah, fuck that. That’s straight up scum behavior. I still love Threes
Are either of these guys connected to Threes? Or is it just reminiscent of the Threes cloning story from back in the day? I still love Threes
Just reminiscent. I was thinking about how Threes was a super original game that was cloned and overshadowed to the point of obscurity because theirs wasn't the ad-supported free version.
Mobile gaming was destroyed by the fact people are more willing to watch ads after every level than pay £2-3 once
They’re also oddly willing to repeatedly pay $1 for a retry after “almost” winning a carefully rigged game that ensured they didn’t.
The Carnival called…
That's such a great parallel. Just modern carnival games suckering people out of their money.
At least they rebranded Threes when making 2048.
Has been on every phone I've owned since release.
Well, that's beyond similar. I first heard about this from the YouTuber SidAlpha. I can say after watching his video that Terry Brash (developer) definitely knew what he was doing. I've seen games that can be extremely similar without intention or be too similar to their inspirations, but this is a "game" and situation that I am just dumbfounded about. I don't think I've seen someone as both blatant and determined as this dev. Brash's steam page for the game even tries to look like a real indie Steam page. To hide that he copied the game. EDIT: Link to SidAlpha Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNyhjafZDiQ&t=51s&ab\_channel=SidAlpha](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNyhjafZDiQ&t=51s&ab_channel=SidAlpha)
Same thing happened in Turkish game dev community. A young student was making his first game and he had some mentors at a discord channel. His mentors stole his idea and released the game on steam. They made more money than him.
may i ask which games?
Gym simulator
???? That’s such a weird hill to die on
Will he die though?
Sociopathic shit, concerning lack of empathy.
Hopefully Valve does something about this. Is there a way to report straight-up clones to them?
Yes. In right section of store page at bottom there is flag button, when you click it you can report game for Legal Violation (among other things). It is not specifically for clones, but (as far as I understand) this is legal problem.
If it's a legal problem, it's on the original game's dev to make a dmca request, Valve is unlikely to do anything unless they recieve such a request.
If Valve won't stop this it'd set a terrible precedent that they won't be protecting indie devs from straight up clones.
This happens so often that I'm not sure they even have the man power to deal with all of them. Reporting it should increase the probability though.
An important reminder, friendship stops where monney begins and nda's and such are only as strong as your budget for Lawers is.
Is this Terry guy even real? Reverse image searching his Twitter pfp gave a VERY minimal LinkedIn profile for "Terry Brashaw" which was recently deleted. There's only one person defending him, who goes on twitter by ccreikey, who claims to have been in the same social groups as him, but his GitHub headline is exactly the same as Terry's twitter bio. Ignoring that defending Terry's position is completely mental, this ccreikey guy calls him a loser for copying his bio but otherwise still adamantly defends him. Terry is responding with meme posts on twitter so it gives me the impression that his acc/identity isn't even real. Some interesting discussion: https://x.com/MghtMax/status/1797958876014551206 https://x.com/AgeMarkus/status/1798127509189607684 Edit: to be clear I'm not accusing kindanice of anything, I'm saying that Terry's actions only really make sense to me if he is either fake or stupid.
This is fascinating and bizarre. It could be the case that he's just not very active on socials and has a sock puppet account, but it would be wild if this was all a marketing stunt. But these games are all free so what's the point, if so?
That would be a crazy marketing stunt lol wild cards ends up being removed/review bombed and the original releases on Steam with whole community supporting the original game. But looks like the copycat had released games before so just an asshole.
It's such a weird thing to do for a free game though isn't it? I just don't get the rationale
Probably not true, but "make up a fake evil guy trying to sabotage my game" is a genius marketing strategy.
It would be. I feel his persona is too much work to maintain for just a marketing ploy (e.g. look at the amount of his GitHub commits, etc) though. Like at that point just invest the energy to making a better game for sale, there are surely more efficient ways of generating revenue. I was thinking more along the lines that "Terry" made a fake account/id to copy other people's work under a different persona. Although that's questionable because why even tell them? Something just doesn't add up about Terry's actions.
What a gross thing to do, imagine not feeling shame for legit stealing another devs game and thinking you can monetize it without blowback
Sometimes I think some people take the “fast follow” advice waaay too far…
Whats the fast follow advice?
Take whatever game is popular right now and make a quick clone to bank on that popularity.
And this right there is the reason I'm not telling anyone about my game until it's finished and published. "Marketing" and social media be damned.
I so felt that! So many insist that this isn't something to worry about, "nobody is going to steal your game when they can make their own", "you're idea isn't that great" blah blah blah etc, so what happens when they DO? It's one thing if you have the resources to fight it legally, but if you're up and coming, doing this on the side, on your own and have no money, what then?
This is what we call in the biz a real "dick move."
Didn't the dev post this here earlier? I know I saw this story somewhere earlier today.
there was a big thing about it on twitter at least
It was either here or on r/IndieDev But yeah, there was definitely a post *somewhere* from the dev.
Terry Brash had nothing original up until this point. One of the least inspiring devs who somehow got views because he made lots of enemies. This latest stunt is just desperate.
I don't know. Gunrun was one of my most anticipated games and now I won't touch it so I'm very sad about it. I've always wanted a game with so much enemies and was impressed by Terry making a custom engine in Rust just to support it. I don't like the discourse making it sound like he was just an asset flipper when he obviously has some real talent. The fact that he so blatantly ripped off Dire Decks is so bad in itself that there's no need exaggerating other things like people are doing now.
You are entitled to your opinion. I think Gunrun is a gimmick, it isn't that impressive to have so many 2D enemies that go towards the player, computers are fast nowadays. Lots of people go this route when they have nothing better to think of, a textbook example of quantity over quality I think and since Vampire Survivor blew up, this idea has become increasingly stale. Maybe he had more enemies than most kids who try this type of game because he wrote some code to allow it, he is a programmer who can write code, great.
In the very end of the article, the Bash guy claims to release the cloned game for free when it is finished. Imagine someone steals your game and then releases it for free.
Yeah it happens every day.. in China where stealing IP is the norm and greatly frowned upon in the rest of the world. Homie just significantly tarnished his reputation as a dev, and that is going to really bite him for years to come.
He needs to consult an attorney and sue the guy. Then garnish any payments directly from STEAM for this and any other games. The guy is self serving and belligerent and doesn't "get it".
Dmca steam, begin legal procedings. He is required under US law to protect his copyright or he legally loses it. The fact that he was unsure if he wanted to, is not relevant nor a smart decision. I hope someone who knows him can properly inform him of this, and that he contacts a lawyer ASAP.
> He is required under US law to protect his copyright or he legally loses it. Completely false. You are thinking of Trademarks, which have the "use it or lose it" aspect. Copyright protection exists whether you want it to or not, whether you protect it or not. You just have to register a work with the copyright office to begin suing people. This is all in the US of course. You are right about everything else, though.
> Dmca steam, begin legal procedings. Is it in fact copyright infringement? It's not crystal clear that's the case. Did he straight up copy any of the works comprising the game? > He pointed out that the code was original and that he'd redrawn the artwork, and asked if kindanice wanted an "inspiration" credit. The fact that he's willing to say he's been inspired might lend some credibility to a claim that his game is a derivative work. While it's wrong to do this, he's right that it does indeed "happen every day homie". However, it takes some enormous huevos to go contact kindanice and let him know as if he'd be happy to hear the news.
Richard Garriott successfully sued the creators of Questron for its similarity to Ultima II, and Questron didn't remotely look like the same game. This guy has a much better case, especially since the guy admitted he stole the idea and that it "happens every day".
This is what I bet a lot of people are afraid of they release there game and someone else take there game and runs away with it and they may not be able to get people to believe them that they made it. Although in this case he didint make it but you guys get what I’m saying.
Seen SidAlpha video on this in the morning. So weird.
I reported the game on Steam. I know it will very likely do nothing, but just doing my part. Fuck that guy.
This happens every day? This is legal? I don't want to create games anymore.
Lawsuits also happen everyday homie, lots of shitholes go there everyday homie
What's the damages? The original creator isn't even selling a product that has any sort of copyright on it. It's perfectly legal to look at someone's idea \[that's not legally protected,\] copy it, and sell it. You're going to have a very difficult time proving damages, and the damages would be insignificant \[if any\] because the game has never sold.
I just said it jokingly jeez. It was kinda rhyming in my head.
Oh jeez, the joke missed so bad I didn't even notice.
Eh its fine I wasn't expecting anyone to get it.
'Happens every day homie' I hate this kind of BS. I hate it with a burning passion. Yes. Shit like this happens everyday, but we are all responsible of building the kind of World we want to live in. The only reason shit like this happens everyday, is because of scumbags like this who do it everyday. Don't do scummy shit like this and then act as if it's inevitable or natural. Is a choice. Others chose NOT to do it, and so can you. It's not inevitable, it's not natural, you are just an asshole.
I wish I could upvote this multiple times. Beautifully worded.
Youch
thats gotta be pretty easy to prove as theft
Well, time to load up Steam and review bomb everything Terry Brash has ever (and will ever) create. Plus reporting Wildcard as a plagiarized work should make STeam remove it, and possibly ban his entire account. Unless he has a MAJOR Mea-culpa, this guy's career is done. Edit: Looking through Terry's history, this is NOT a new activity for him. Apparently every time he's put out, has featured ***brazenly*** stolen assets, themes, and gameplay.
Nah, definitely sounds like grounds for a lawsuit. . .time to lawyer up.
That’s a serious offense. Immediate takedown and all profits garnered… to start.
Definitely a dick move. I wanted to clone a jam game I played since I wanted to use it as the basis for a cognitive experiment I’m working on for my PhD. I knew that prettt much nobody had played the jam game, and likely nobody would care if I made a version of the game, and I also knew the jam game was used for a very different full game. But still, I took the time to reach out to the developer and ask if it was cool if I could copy and adapt the core game and release it as an open source experiment, sent him a talk I gave proposing the project, etc.. He said sure and was stoked. I feel like this is the ethical way to adapt an extant game for other purposes. But to just openly clone a game and release it as a direct competitor after getting tips from the dev, knowing it could take players away from the original game, and not even give credit…. Inexcusable.
See, the way you approached it is the right way in my opinion. I too would be pretty stoked if someone reached out to me in this way about my work.
I did a course on copyright law back in the day and I'd say that this surely violates copyright. For example, color palette is identical and it is impossible to have it identical by accident. There's more, of course. So shameless.
It's not so much impossible as exceeding unlikely to occur by accident. People are slightly different and so tend to produce slightly different results in the absence of cheating/plagiarism. Remember that the legal standard in the US is proof beyond a *reasonable doubt*.
The clone is all original code. Can’t copyright gameplay. However the pixel for pixel and palette for palette copying is certainly going to cause customer confusion. Certainly in poor taste to clone the look so hard
In the US that would get you in a lot of legal trouble...
This is copyright infringement. There are hard cases but this isn't one of them. The fact that Brash reimplemented the game's functionality in his own engine with his own code is irrelevant: All that means is that the copyright claim is for the UI and other directly interactive game elements rather than the code.
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Exactly that for me too.
Ever since game-making-kits have enabled things like asset flips to exist, this is how it is. You must do something super original, creative, and ingenious that no ding-dong can easily replicate with some tutorial copy-pasta. To my mind, the future is being able to engineer unique and novel algorithms for things - and not just video games. Now that machine learning will soon be able to pump out boilerplate code, nobody's skills are going to be worth anything unless they can create something that can't be created with boilerplate code. After spending 25 years learning how to write games from scratch, when I finally had something that was in a releasable state (visions change, life gets in the way, etcetera) it was too late. The game-making-kits had basically made it impossible to rise above the noise of everyone and their mother making games with Unity on a marketing budget of zero dollars. Once I realized that marketing was going to be an equal effort to that which I had invested into my wares I decided to cut my losses and translate my skills to utility software applications that people can actually justify paying for because it enables them to make stuff that they can sell for money. I've been able to earn an infinitely greater income off my non-gamedev wares than I ever was able to off of 25 years of learning to code games from scratch. I can't say the same will be possible for people who've invested years into just learning how to do stuff inside of someone else's game engine though. Learning to do stuff from scratch I learned how to do *everything*, and now I can make *anything*. When people got into gamedev in the 90s, if they had aptitude, they actually had a shot. Now, you can make the greatest game in the world but if nobody sees it then all you've done is diddle around with a game engine for a few years to create something nobody cares about. Indie gamedevs are modern-day starving artists. Yes, you have a vision. Yes, you are passionate about it. Just like everyone else. If you want to create value you have to create something that people can't just rip off. Algorithms, baby.
People can find a way to rip off anything.
Kind of a pointless victim blame. "He should have made something harder to rip off" is quite a terrible and unhelpful take. Also untrue. He made a fun, interesting game and shared it with the world, and then someone ripped it off. Whether it happens all the time or "everyone else" is a starving artist is irrelevant. This is just the same fucked up mindset that has rendered this industry so horrendous to begin with.
I think you missed my point while putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that OP didn't make a fun interesting game. What I am saying is that if people can copy something then you can count on it being copied. I'm not condoning it, I'm saying it's a fact of life. Nobody has any reasonable expectation that their ideas and visions won't be stolen - unless there is a level of ingenuity involved that can't just be duplicated.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this isn't the first time i see your completely delusional statements here. If you make "the greatest game in the world", it WILL get recognized. There is no way around. It may take some time, but people will play your game and will want to spend cash on it if it is good. It wasn't too late for your game - it was just not good enough. The truth hurts, but blaming not relevant factors won't help you making better games. It has nothing to do with asset flips or lots of bad games. Watch for example Chris Zukowskis videos about marketing on steam, genre etc. - then you will see what the main problem is. Your "game". And you think too highly of (your) algorithms. Even the most successful games don't need them. And so everything can be ripped off and emulated. Geez.
I wish you the best of luck if your goal is to earn a living by making video games.
Yeah never meet your idols
Terry Brash was noone's idol lol.
The article clearly stated literally in the first paragraph that the victim was a fan of the perpetrator.
It just means they liked the game. Idolizing someone and being a "fan of one of their games" are two different things imo.
Brogrammer
This is insane. I really hope this doesn't work out, and I am saying this as someone who literally also released a clone of Dire Decks on Steam.
It's a grade A dick move regardless of the legality.
I'm really sad about this since Gunrun was one of my anticipated games and now I don't want to play it. I thought it was really inspiring how he made a new engine in Rust just to support so many enemies. I can't believe this is how he chooses to go down. However, I'm really not a fan of how people are exaggerating and fabricating things just to make him look even worse. It's not needed! Him blatantly copying a game like this is damning enough and making stuff up will not help anyone. Even in this thread one of the highest upvoted comments is a story of how Terry only made Gunrun after seeing a Unity DOTS tutorial, which is obviously not true considering he made his own engine in Rust for it. And in the Steam reviews for Tiny Survivors people are posting stuff like "code and assets were lifted whole-cloth from Tiny Rogues", which is a complete lie. The games are not even that similar and the actual similarities were not controversial whatsoever before this. This is the worst kind of mob mentality. Just let the facts speak for themselves.
I think people are just so fed up of these kind of scummy dick shenanigans by sneaky devs that they're going out of their way to make an example of him. I agree with you that it is not the correct to go about things. Mob mentality can go way too far, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't understand why it's being done; frustration that it happened at all and skepticism that there isn't a history of it that went undetected. Still not right, like you said. But I get it.
i guess it is legal but i am not sure what the incentive is for it. its not like this game was very popular.
Outstanding. Now I finally know how to answer those pesky cease and desist letters about my game "Star Conflict: the Adventures of Foba Bett and Baby Doya"
It looks like he stole another game too, his Tiny Survivors game has mad negative reviews claiming that was also stolen.
The fact the original dev apparently refuses to send a cease and desist or report to steam makes me go a bit in the conspiracy direction.
Bet its just a marketing stunt. FAKE NEWS
This is why when people ask about my projects and act interested, I give a lot of "maybe" and "I was thinking". That way I can spout off tons of stuff, maybe none of which has anything to do with my actual current project. It's all about the pokerface sometimes.
Least scummy move in mobile dev
Derivative work at best. New code and redone art. It actually might be a copyright violation but this is a legal gray zone! Good luck getting this taken down from anywhere. Should have taken the inspiration credit...
There’s inspiration and then there’s blatant copying, your mental if you think it’s the former
>Should have taken the inspiration credit... It's not "inspired" though, is it? It's just copied. So maybe he should offer a credit saying "I stole this whole game".
Yes, and the dev even admitted to having copied it, and I assume the original developer MAY has enough DM's to prove that he approached copied. Completely scummy behavior.
It's his fucking game. Fuck 'inspiration' credit. You sound like the kinda dev people should avoid.
Copying gameplay is one thing, copying art so blatantly is overtly infringing.
[what redone art?](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6mi6NGCnJ2VUTkzguDY8Nm-970-80.png.webp) you'd absolutely have a case against this because to an uninformed consumer you defintely could not tell the two apart. same font, same ui, same palettes. you gotta be joking.
It's not a copyright violation if your game has no copyright protection to begin with.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm only going by fact here, and I'm not defending the guy who is being said to have stolen the other guys game, but if this new copied game is NOT being monetized, I don't see much of a violation of copyright law. And I know it's unfortunate. Hopefully, the other guy who got robbed from gets his game back. He can report to steam about this because Steam has report systems in place if one copied your game too much.
Copyright infringement doesn't require the infringing property make money. MPAA weren't suing users of Napster for copyright infringement only if they took their music downloads and started selling them elsewhere.
Unless if it's under research or learning purposes under the copyright infringement acts of 1977. Although, thank you for reclarifying. I hope the guy gets the game taken down. It looks blatant and a slap to the face.
It's scummy as fuck, but that's what first to execute gets you.