Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The last two weeks have not been easy for independent game developer TJ ATOMICA.

Around November last year, TJ released a demonstration of using the UE5 engine to simulate Superman flight on the Reddit forum. Although it took only a few seconds, the idea sparked a heated discussion in the forum.

Not long after that, Epic released the Matrix: awakening technology demonstration software, and the encouraged TJ thought his Superman game could go a step further.

After months of efforts to build an amazing city in Matrix: awakening, he put his Superman into the urban agglomeration in Matrix: awakening and further improved the game. finally built a playable Superman simulator and posted a free download link. Although many netizens think the project has great potential, considering the copyright issues that may be involved, the game should have gone so far.

However, TJ did not expect that his free games would be sold directly on Steam.

On November 1 this year, a game called "Heroes City Superman Edition" was launched on Steam for $35. Some players found that the game was very similar to the Superman Demo released by TJ, but the "producer" was a so-called Hero Game studio. The game is not only sold at a high price, but also has a detailed update plan, which looks very formal.

Soon, TJ also discovered the situation, he filed a complaint to the Steam authorities, but did not get any effective response.

So he tried to leave a message in the game's community to prevent people from being deceived, but the producer quickly banned him, and not only that, the producer also found his Youtube channel and issued a copyright warning for his game demo video, asking him to take it off the shelves.

There is no doubt that this has caused trouble for TJ, because the game itself is just a concept demonstration Mod, in which Superman can do nothing but high-speed flight, and players who spend real money will inevitably feel cheated after entering the game. As a result, some players even followed the clues to TJ here, accusing him of playing games that were not worth that much money at all.

TJ had no choice but to spend money on a free game made by himself in order to get a chance to leave comments on the game. He posted all the details of the whole story in the comments section, saying that without the source code on hand, the thieves could not update the game at all, and that the other party was just making up a huge lie in the hope that people would recognize the scam.

To TJ's surprise, instead of being a pussy, the producers responded that they did not steal the game, but falsely accused TJ of wanting to monopolize the game-they declared that TJ used to be a member of the studio, but finally left the studio, and now that the game is making money, TJ wants to monopolize the game and the revenue.

Although he responded, perhaps feeling the pressure, the so-called studio reduced the price of the game to $11 a few days later. On the 14th, after many efforts, the game was finally removed from the shelves by Steam, and the farce came to an end.

After two weeks of torture, TJ finally had a good night's sleep. He also thanked those who supported him on Twitter, and although the incident made him realize how easy it is for young developers to be targeted by lawbreakers, he was gratified that the result of the incident made him more convinced that there are far more good guys than bad guys in this world.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Leon45

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