Stealing from Elden Ring? New Soulslike takes radical step after serious allegations

The developer of Bleak Faith: Forsaken has to replace parts of his game, as he apparently fell for a criminal scam on these.

Did the recently released Soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken use animations from Elden Ring ? At release, apparently yes. The studio behind it pushes the responsibility for this towards the Epic marketplace. This in turn points to the providers of a certain package of assets that developers could acquire for their projects. Apparently, the latter sold the animations illegally.

At the moment, one thing is certain: The affected animations have been removed again and specially created replacements by indie developer Archangel are to follow soon via an update.

Evidence via gifs

What exactly happened? Indie developer Archangel faced serious accusations shortly after the release of its new Soulslikes Bleak Faith: Forsaken. As reported by (IGN) among others, several players had noticed that a number of animations included quasi-identical counterparts in From Software”s hit Elden Ring.

The obvious suspicion quickly arose that files from Elden Ring were being extracted and used as digital stolen goods in the player”s own game.

Example (was this animation) as captured in a short gif by a streamer. Even more glaring, due to the sprawling length of the footage used, is the clip seen below, posted in the Reddit subthread for Bleak Faith: Forsaken by user (LuxrayLucien) 

     Yikes
by     u/LuxrayLucien in     Bleak_Faith  

☻

How does the developer react? Archangel rejects the accusations. These animations were taken from an asset pack that was regularly purchased in the Unreal Engine Marketplace. In the meantime, according to research by (PCGamer) this is no longer available – Epic has already reacted.

Is outsourcing or the purchase of finished assets common? Yes, outsourcing, for example in the area of 3D modelling or animation, is common and is standard in the industry. Buying ready-made assets is also common, especially among smaller developers. Archangel also refers to this in response to a question from PCGamer:

In the case of Bleak Faith: Forsaken, Archangel says that about ten percent of the game is made up of assets purchased and subsequently adapted from the Store.

If you want to get a closer look at Bleak Faith: Forsaken, you can do so by watching this trailer.

Who is to blame for the incident? Under applicable law and according to the Unreal Engine Marketplace Terms of Use and Sale, the provider of the assets is responsible. He must ensure that he owns the corresponding rights to the goods he offers. This was apparently not the case here.

What does Epic say? So far, the company has not commented on the issue. The removal of the affected assets is the only response as of Wednesday noon, 15 March. They did respond to a request from the indie studio via email, but denied any responsibility and also denied the possibility of an independent review of assets.

 So far, the company has not responded to the request.

To our colleagues at PCGamer, the defrauded indie developers would like to see more far-reaching consequences to avoid such situations in the future:

For more on the latest work from the genre founders of soulslikes, From Sofware, check out the articles below.

The Soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken was released on March 10 on the PC, as well as for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in their respective variants.

Do you buy the developers” reasoning? Shouldn”t they have noticed the identical character of the animations? And have you ever noticed something similar in another game? Did you have the impression that animations, models or textures looked familiar?