Thread by @steelkrill

A big scam company just stole my WHOLE game from steam, ripped it and sold it as their own on Playstation and other consoles.

More details in the thread to hopefully prevent both other developers and people from getting scammed 🧵 (1/10)

(2/10) Recently with the help of my publisher - I released The Backrooms 1998 on Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo switch. I was pretty happy - you know? Been in development for a while and being a solo developer and having my game finally on consoles is always awesome to see.

(3/10) That was cut short after someone pointed out that the game was there already - this company called "COOL DEVS S.R.L" stole my whole game, ripped it, pasted bad AI crap as cover, literally made a BAD version of it and just published it on consoles and sold it themselves

(4/10) They stole the whole game by using some program and de-compiled the whole assets alongside the music, sounds, voice lines from THE voice actor I hired and everything else. They only changed the monster and the picture on the frame and put it up for sale on consoles.

(5/10) We are already working on finding out more info about them, and submitted a DMCA request to remove the game off the stores, right now it's down from PlayStation and Xbox but still up on the Nintendo store unfortunately. Hopefully they will also remove it soon as well.

(6/10) If anyone wants to see .. Here is a video comparison of both games.

Video Link to the fake game: youtu.be/QdQ6qtcSIFc?t=… (Named: Backrooms Horror Escape)

Video Link to my original game: youtu.be/7tWYhFfXNBM?t=… (Named: The Backrooms 1998)

(7/10) It seems these are not just 1 company, but a lot of them where they create scam games & stolen games and sell them on the consoles to trick players into thinking they are buying a real game

Link to the fake game they stole from me, still up on N: nintendo.com/us/store/produ…

(8/10) Another important detail that may have ties or not: I got contacted last year by a VERY sketchy publisher wanting to publish my game. I declined because something seemed off. Next thing I know, someone stole it and published as their own. Could there be ties to this?

(9/10) Link to the full post. Reason I made this is because I want people more aware to not get scammed. Also for other devs. Even if I can prevent just one or two people from falling victims to this scam, I can say that at least I tried.

Link: reddit.com/r/PS5/comments…

(10/10) Players: Please be careful and check the games before you purchase. Check developer accounts too. If you suspect the game is one of those fake games, then see if you can request a refund.

Developers: Make sure to use Il2cpp in your code. This will make it hard to steal.

Lastly I just want all the people that reached out to me and for covering this topic. With your help - I think we can make a difference into battling these scams.

Thank you @SwitchStarsYT for making a very detailed video about the situation.

Link:

@SwitchStarsYT Thank you to @Charalanahzard for bringing more light to this, appreciate it.

Link:

Hopefully the more people see this, the more we can stop these scams from happening. If you can, please share.

This is not right. Both on developers, and on gamers.