In the matter of those suspiciously similar Elden Ring animations found in the recently released post apocalyptic souls like Bleak Faith: Forsaken, it appears that sci-fi didn't steal from fantasy but was in possession of stolen goods.

Developer Archangel Studios have committed to replacing all stolen assets in their game.

Their initial response to allegations of theft was that like many developers they made use of the Unreal Marketplace on which such assets are sold, and their take on this was that Elden Ring developers FromSoftware had made similar use and purchased the same assets before them.

Archangel contacted Epic about the situation.

Epic's response was to remove the assets from their store and the following:

Pursuant to the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace seller represents and warrants to Epic that they have appropriate rights to upload their content. As with any store that hosts third-party content, however, Epic is not in a position to independently verify such rights, and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content.

So someone ripped these animations out of Elden Ring, uploaded them to the Marketplace and proceeded to profit illegally.

Epic take a 12% cut of all sales.

Archangel issued a statement:

[The response from Epic] is not satisfactory for us and so we have taken the decision to replace the assets purchased from the store over the next several days. Some changes we included in the recent patches, and more are coming in the next few days. Certainly this has been a huge lesson for us and hopefully other indie creators out there too that assets on these storefronts seemingly cannot be purchased in good faith.

From FromSoftware only silence this week.

Epic were recently spanked to the tune of half a billion US dollars by the US Federal Trade Commission for a range of dubious business practices in relation to how in-game purchases are made and privacy violations.

Could a high profile case of copyright infringement like this could see their administration of the Marketplace subjected to similar scrutiny?

While their position of being unable to verify ownership of uploaded assets might be defensible, that might only hold true if they robustly verify the identity of Marketplace sellers upon account creation so that transgressors can be pursued.

[ Main Image: Bleak Faith: Forsaken. Credit: Archangel Studios via Steam. ]

References

Adam, Khayl (March 14, 2023). Epic 'Not in a Position' to Verify Assets After Elden Ring Animation Scandal Engulfs Bleak Faith: Forsaken. Push Square.

Steam. Bleak Faith: Forsaken. Archangel Studios.