I came across this news after watching a Virtual Insider video with the clickbait title This VR Game No Longer Exists. The news did come out about a month ago though but I haven’t seen it posted on Lemmy yet. A 47 second trailer for the game can be found here. In it you can see some elements that do exist in the Metro series such as a lighter being used for a light source, a watch timer, gas mask mechanics, lighting being a consideration for combat, and a scene where enemies chase you while you travel on a rail cart.
I feel like the game looked great and had a lot of potential.
Part of why I found this interesting is the writer of the three Metro novels, Dmitry Glukhovsky, has supported over 90 different novels taking place in the Metro universe from various authors. Even though the video game is likely a different situation compared to the novels this whole ordeal seemed out of place to me.
The text in the Discord screenshot is as followed:
@everyone Very important bad news
What happened?
Unfortunately, today I have some bad news. Recently, “Paradox of Hope” has been accused of copyright infringement. In the game “Paradox of Hope,” no names, characters, events, assets, or code from any other game are used, and its lore and story are original. The setting, idea, or gameplay mechanics cannot be protected by copyright.
Therefore, I sincerely believe that “Paradox of Hope” does not violate anyone’s copyright and only uses similar imagery and analogous elements inherent to the genre of Soviet post-apocalyptic shooters.
However, unfortunately, the one with more money has the upper hand in legal matters. I simply cannot afford to take this into the realm of legal proceedings. Consequently, the further development of PoH is halted, and the game will no longer be available for purchase.
This is a very difficult day for me. They have taken away not only my sole source of income, but also my beloved creation into which I poured my soul and heart over the last four years. But most of all, I am sorry that I have let you down, all those who supported me in the early stages of development. Please forgive me, my friends. I have no words to express how sorry I What happens next?
As far as I know, those who already own the game will be able to continue playing it. It will remain in your Steam library. All the recent changes I made in the past few days in an attempt to save the game have been rolled back.
I intend to take all the accumulated experience from working on PoH and release a new game in the same genre, but without using the Moscow metro setting. I will also likely seek the support of a major publisher this time around to ensure avoiding copyright issues.
In this Discord, I will share the very first news about the new game and will conduct closed testing. I will try my best to ensure that everyone who purchased PoH will have access to testing and also receive the new game for free upon release. Once again, I offer my deepest apologies for this situation and hope that you will stay here and follow the updates.
I think he was intentionally pretty vague about that. Maybe out of fear of landing in hot water. I believe
Deep SilverEmbracer Group owns the rights to the Metro video games and it might be one of those fuzzy situations where they are (somewhat) overstepping what they can legally do because a small project can’t afford to fight back and they are striking down something that could potentially be competition for something they might attempt in the future. A similar example of the latter being Take-Two Interactive taking down a GTA 5 VR mod or the source port for GTA 3/VC for devices such as the Switch and PS Vita.I don’t think they wanted an exit because the game was slowly gathering attention online in the year leading up to this. I think it’s mentioned in a few articles it was their primary source of income and I don’t know if they have any other projects on the go. I imagine by now Paradox of Hope’s discussion page would have been updated if they did.
The fear of landing in hot water argument is very probable although i never heard someone got in troubles for saying who gave the DMCA. For the GTA 5 VR and GTA VC ports, it’s understandable since it’s using copyrighted material. This is a new game that was inspired by older games, the takedown sets a dangerous precedent. Imagine if every silent hill inspired game was sent a DMCA…
The GTA 3/VC port wasn’t using copyrighted material though. You still need to own a copy of the game and bring over your own data files. It’s similar to how OpenMW allows you to play TES 3: Morrowind on your phone. Nothing was being distributed on their end.
The GTA 5 VR mod was filed under a copyright not licensing claim so it doesn’t seem like it was about the creators making money. Likewise you still need to own a copy of the game. There are conversion tools that target a multitude of games with the goal of converting them into a VR experience that don’t, to my knowledge, receive legal threats. It’s just that this project targeted Take Two Interactive games (it also worked for Red Dead 2).
I agree. I feel like a significant amount of the games I’ve played recently are very upfront about being inspired by Resident Evil, Wasteland, or the STALKER series. I hope it doesn’t become an annoying hurdle for indie developers.
If it was just an engine then the GTA 3 “port” is i believe legal. Just another company abusing it’s power.
As for GTA 5 VR, I know they can’t make any money of their work or they’d have something worse than a just a mere DMCA ( Nintendo made someone pay it half his income for life ) but I know the most devs are mostly doing it for the challenge and more importantly out of love for the game. As an exemple, here’s someone porting portal to the N64
I think it’s the wording they used. A DMCA is one thing but skirting around a license is another thing and that’s not what Take Two went after.
I think it really depends on the company and what they think they can get away with in the fine print of the terms and conditions. It might be Nintendo as well who I believe at a time was going after game play videos.
I wonder if there is a court case in the US that talks about game modding in a similar way to the one that legitimized console modding?
Yes.
I am not from USA so i don’t know. I highly doubt it tho.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/eN_-V7PDKAo?si=FpMUR1nfia8Y0lol
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.