... but it took a while.
The creator of a Superman Unreal Engine 5 demo has regained control of his work following its theft on both Steam and YouTube.
The Melbourne-based Tyson Butler-Boschma created the demo earlier in this year and made it free to access on itch.io before finding the content repackaged by an entity called Hero Game Studios.
Retitled Heroes City Superman Edition, the bogus developer was selling Butler-Boschma’s demo for $10.99 USD.
Butler-Boschman took to Steam to detail the theft.
“I made this demo myself months ago as a proof of concept, using mostly free assets,” he wrote. “Several YouTube videos and reviews will confirm this, and I was always open and honest about it.
“To be safe, I bought this game… my game, to absolutely confirm it was my project,” he added, “and I have confirmed this just now when I played it, and found the opening level I created from scratch WITH A MESSAGE FROM ME, explaining to players how the simple demo works and offers two doors to walk through.
“It’s the morality that is the biggest issue here,” Butler-Boschma continued. “If they took it and put it on Steam for free, I wouldn’t have really cared, but they are selling it, making wild claims, taking people’s money, using pure lies, and dragging my name through the mud in the process.”
Following Butler-Boschman’s post, Hero Game Studios first refuted the claim and then banned him from the Steam discussion board for “hate speech”.
“Our game is not stolen,” the studio said in reply. “One of the former developers of our user team TJ ATOMICA 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.”
The studio also lodged a copyright claim against a YouTube video detailing the demo that Butler-Boschman had posted back in April.
Thankfully, the situation is now resolved.
“I woke up to hear my video has been returned to YouTube [and] the game has been removed from Steam,” Butler-Boschman confirmed earlier in the week.
If you haven’t checked out the demo yet, make sure you do so over on itch.io — and for free!
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