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Ariana Grandehosted a psychedelic concert inFortnite, as didTravis Scotta year earlier.
The company can also just snatch up someone elses idea without any licensing agreements or royalty payouts.
Innersloth, the indie team behind the massive Twitch hitAmong Us,just learned that the hard way.
Basically, Epic unveiled a new game mode inFortnitethatthe company is calling Impostors.
The premise is simple.
A small handful of players are ported into a subterranean base on a desert island.
If this sounds familiar, its becauseAmong Usis effectively theexact same game.
Impostors gratuitously pilfersAmong Uss theme, map layout, and even some of its terminology.
In fact, I dont think its possible to charitably interpret whatFortniteis cooking up here.
Among Uswas initially developed by exactly three people, and Innersloth remains a fully independent shop.
It wouldve been really, really cool to collab.
Just sad indie hours rn, wrote Victoria Tran,Among Usscommunity director.
Is it really that hard to put 10 percent more effort into putting your own spin on it though?
At the end of the day, Im just gonna keep making the games I wanna make.
Everything else is just noise.
We didn’t patent the Among Us mechanics.
I don’t think that leads to a healthy game industry.
Is it really that hard to put 10% more effort into putting your own spin on it though?
Bromander is orbiting an ugly truth here.
Game development is an intensely derivative industry.
Impostors doesnt appear to be anything more than a straight-up hijacking.
Like Tran said earlier, couldnt they have just made a deal?
This also isnt the first time Epic has feasted on someone elses success.
(That provoked a lawsuit.)
Can you patent a dance?
Should game developers be forced to pay homage to their inspirations?
After all of its recent triumphs, Epic is a companythat is now worth nearly $30 billion.
It will hear you out, but only on its own terms.
