How has Stardew Valley's dev not sued this game for plagiarism yet?

[vitez_vaddiszno]

I've just found out about this game 5 minutes ago. I feel completely neutral towards it so don't take my post as a diss. It does look like a good game and I may try it in the future. I'm also asking out of good faith and genuine curiosity. With that said... how in the world has SV's dev not sued yet?

From the Store screenshots: The graphics are 99.5% the EXACT LITERAL same. Only the people's sprites are different. This is the main topic of my question, although there are other similarities;

The tools and mechanics are the same - pickaxe, axe, scythe, hoe. The plants too, even the reapable little grass tiles are the same.

The interface is the same, the inventory is the same, the time mechanic is the same, only there's an analog clock instead of a digital one.

The goals are the same - other than running an inn instead of a farm, you mine, run a farm (oh so you do run a farm after all...), explore, befriend townspeople... COME ON! At least make it subtler!.

And as a cherry on top (pun intended) even the fruit varieties and their sprites are the same from the screenshot with a lot of fruits. As it stands this game looks more Stardew Valley than Stardew Valley itself. Game companies sued for much less...

[SamsTheMan]

wait until you play the harvest moon games and see what stardew valley stole from

[Azrael ♡]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

wait until you play the harvest moon games and see what stardew valley stole from

SV made all the art and graphics themselves. Inspiration/reference is not plagiarism.

[Pixel-Bash]

yeah it looks like they stole a lot of assets/sounds

[Grims]

Claiming a company stole something and not purchased them is a laughable joke! Assets are soled all the time..... show me 1 piece of evidence that theses assets are stolen. Oh that's right you cant because you are making baseless accusations.

[vitez_vaddiszno]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

wait until you play the harvest moon games and see what stardew valley stole from

I know about Harvest Moon but the two games look totally different. It's just the same genre is all. The similarity between Stardew and Travellers go way beyond that kind of similarity. The graphics are literally copypasted.

Originally posted by Grims:

Claiming a company stole something and not purchased them is a laughable joke! Assets are soled all the time..... show me 1 piece of evidence that theses assets are stolen. Oh that's right you cant because you are making baseless accusations.

Are you replying to Pixel-Bash perhaps? In any case, whether assets were stolen or not, Stardew can still sue. AFAIK Bethesda once sued "Scrolls" because the name sounded like "The Elder Scrolls". That was just 1 word, not 90% of the game copied wholesale.

[stephluvvsyou]

As someone who has dropped hundreds of hours into Stardew, I can safely say that this game is a VERY different experience than that.

The graphic style might feel similar, but it is not the same.

People who look at the trailer, screenshots etc. without spending any actual time playing in the game make these accusations from time to time (you're not the first, believe me) and it's always such a shame, because the people who have played this game know how very different the two games are from one another.

Now if you're talking about influence and inspiration - games borrow that from each other ALL the time. In fact if we all remember right, Stardew got it's from Harvest Moon. Tons of other games at this point have gotten inspiration from Stardew. This part of gaming will never go away. Devs draw from one another to help inspire their own dreams.

And a LOT of sim games have the same objectives : farming, cooking, mining, befriending NPC's. This is not original to Stardew Valley. Harvest Moon was doing it before them. And many games that have followed Stardew do it too.

Point is : this game is NOT Stardew Valley. Not the graphics, not the sounds, not the gameplay. I hope one day people will play it before they assume these things.

[Descriptor]

Stardew Valley, as great as it is, didn't invent the concept of stylized pixel graphics. They are very similar looking, but that's because they're covering a similar setting. There's only a few ways to make pixelated grass look nice, after all. A broad style shouldn't be copyrighted.

Unless it can be shown that they stole actual assets, there's no grounds for a lawsuit. Besides, I feel like the SV guy is too much of a chad to make such a frivolous lawsuit. Heck, even the Bethesda lawsuit you mention above had more to do with conflicting copywrite names than anything, which has more direct legal ramifications. And that wasn't even a won lawsuit, merely settled.

[Captn Tunabeerd]

"The tools and mechanics are the same - pickaxe, axe, scythe, hoe. The plants too," So you say that microsoft should sue this game cause they have same tools and tools do what it should do ? After 300 hours in stardew valley and 40 in this one i can tell it is a difference experience not at all the same, yeah tools are same and few concept too but its about inspiration from other games not copy/pasting. Have a wonderfull Christmas ! <3

[kornflakes89]

ConcernedApe hasn't filed a plagiarism lawsuit yet because...he can't.

Plagiarism is where you are actually taking something someone else has made and using it for your own product. That's not the case here.

The fruit and plant sprites might look similar, but they're not literally the same, nobody is going to care about them looking similar unless assets were stolen.

The game has a pickaxe, shovel, hoe and scythe, doesn't matter, just because the two games have the same tools doesn't mean they have grounds for a lawsuit. Hell, Minecraft has a pickaxe, shovel, hoe and Minecraft Dungeons has scythes.

So what if the goals are similar? Stardew Valley isn't the first game of its genre, you can't sue someone just because the goals of your games are similar. If that were a thing, the Harvest Moon developers would've sued the hell out of Concerned Ape.

Originally posted by vitez_vaddiszno:

The similarity between Stardew and Travellers go way beyond that kind of similarity. The graphics are literally copypasted.

In any case, whether assets were stolen or not, Stardew can still sue. AFAIK Bethesda once sued "Scrolls" because the name sounded like "The Elder Scrolls". That was just 1 word, not 90% of the game copied wholesale.

If you can't use the word "Literally" properly, it's best to not use it at all.

No actually, ConcernedApe can't sue unless assets were stolen. He wouldn't have grounds to file a lawsuit otherwise.

Which was a dumb lawsuit that never should've happened because Scrolls is a card collecting/battling game and wouldn't have had any competition with Elder Scrolls.

Also, the only thing Bethesda/Zenimax succeeded in with that lawsuit was wasting time and money. Mojang won the interim injunction and were allowed to continue using the name Scrolls and the case was ultimately settled.

[Witz3nd]

Originally posted by SamsTheMan:

wait until you play the harvest moon games and see what stardew valley stole from

Exactly!
I remember reading somewhere that Stardew was made because the creator loved Harvest Moon, and Minecraft, and wanted to do better.
I do love Stardew though.

[vitez_vaddiszno]

Okay I get that you all love the game, but try to put aside subjective feelings and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer who's checking out the store page.

Some things being the same isn't a problem, but when too much of everything is the same, it's kinda fishy.

The inventory is the same rectangular matrix like in SV, why not make it like Diablo where you play Tetris with the items? Or Skyrim when it's in a list? Its position is also the same on the screen. Why not make it like Terraria and put it on the top? Even the little wooden frames around the item slots look the same. Even the clock gets put in the corner, WHY? Or why not add something that isn't in SV, like a GTA-styled minimap? This is just a brainstorm, there are dozens of easy and unutilized ways to make it look unique. Everything just looks the same down the exact detail.

And having one same tool is not a problem either but it's exactly the same genre with the same graphics and the same SET of tools. The only difference is the presence of a mop, but why not add a shovel or something? Or remove the pickaxe and the hoe? Why would you need to farm when you're supposed to run an inn? Why generate bait for people like me to muse on the overbearing similarity? As a developer it's in your interest to make your game unique instead of being called "that XY clone". Even if you don't call it that, people who see it for the first time will. And the correct way to handle it is not to get defensive because I'm not attacking you. It's to acknowledge the validity of the point being raised and addressing it. Now, I did get answer to the gist of my question regarding the legalities. However you absolutely can sue for simarity, like in this case:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/29/lindt-chocolate-bunnies-lidl-swiss-court-trademark-ruling

Now, I also think ConcernedApe won't sue. But in the court of public opinion this game will never not be called a Stardew Clone unless it changes something.

Graphics simarities make up the majority of this problem. Nobody would notice the other similarities if they looked just slightly different. For a layman, Terraria and Minecraft are different, Harvest and Stardew are different because they don't look the same. Hell, Harvest is 3D and looks more like Zelda than Stardew. But Travellers uses the same view, same artstyle, same sprite resolution, same color palette and even the same artistic quirks, such as the little rounded corners on rectangles like windows as Stardew. That should change for the game's own good. I guarantee you that I could take 10 sprites from Travellers and 10 from Stardew and a layman would not be able to sort them out, that's how similar they look. It's possible to make pixated games look different. Terraria looks nothing like Stardew looks nothing like King Arthur's Gold looks nothing like Noita looks nothing like Undertale looks nothing like Blasphemous...

I do admit, the people's sprites look different. That's a step in the direction that will help this game reach a wider audience and carve out its own "lebensraum" in the crowded indie market. Otherwise at best you'll get people like me who wonder why everything looks the same, or at worst those trolls who call the game a cheap ripoff and intellectual theft and won't even give it a chance. It's an own goal that benefits no one, really.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by vitez_vaddiszno:

Okay I get that you all love the game, but try to put aside subjective feelings and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer who's checking out the store page.

Some things being the same isn't a problem, but when too much of everything is the same, it's kinda fishy.

Suggestion: watch maybe 10 minutes of a YouTube video of someone who has got a few hours in playing this game, and another 10 minutes of someone who has got a few hours in to Stardew Valley playing that game. There is a mild visual similarity, but the actual gameplay is quite different. This game is about running a tavern (cooking food, brewing drinks, and serving and cleaning until you get staff to help), and almost everything else you do is in direct service to that: you farm in order to get fruits and vegetables as ingredients, you mine and chop to make nails and planks to expand the tavern, etc. You can only make money or progress by serving food and drinks to customers, or renting rooms to overnight visitors.

Stardew Valley is a life sim, with a variety of things to do and places to explore, and a strong focus on forming relationships with other characters. But there's no option to just open a restaurant and spend your days cooking for your guests.

[Endora]

Originally posted by vitez_vaddiszno:

Okay I get that you all love the game, but try to put aside subjective feelings and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer who's checking out the store page.

I don't like to be rude, but since you're so adamant on not really do your resseach before to write your baseless argument, I'll be honest: we really don't care.

[Quantifiably Inert]

What an extremely stupid post. There is something inherently wrong with you people.

Stardew Valley is more of a Harvest Moon clone than this game is a clone to anything. Yes this game uses cool ideas from other games. Experience points drops like Graveyard Keeper, Tools like harvest moon (you cannot say the 4 main tools were stolen from stardew since they originated in Harvest Moon SNES but some people are too stupid to know this), etc.

What other non-power tool would you like to see used to chop trees? What other non-power tool should be used to mine ore, or till soil?

About the sprites....In no way do the assets look like stardew valley anymore than they look like upgrades SEGA graphics. The people literally look like the old beavis and butthead animations from the SEGA and SNES games. How many ways can you make corn look like corn with pixels, or a truss, or a carrot? Are you saying Concerned Ape has exclusive rights on pixels and what color combinations are allowed to be used?

Or are you saying Concerned Ape has exclusive rights over what a pixel tree is allowed to look like, or any crop, or rock?

You mentioned the putting sprites against each other and asking a layman to tell the difference. I think this is definitely more of a "you" issue as the OVERWHELMING majority of replies say you are wrong. The overwhelming majority of responses here, and on other posts, disagree with you. What do you think a jury would say? Us "laymen" seem to be the majority which makes your very wrong and very stupid opinion beneath even laymen.

Delete this post. It makes you look very stupid and ignorant. You obviously do not have an objective, logical cell upstairs or you would never had made this ridiculous post.

[vitez_vaddiszno]

Originally posted by Endora:

Originally posted by vitez_vaddiszno:

Okay I get that you all love the game, but try to put aside subjective feelings and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer who's checking out the store page.

I don't like to be rude, but since you're so adamant on not really do your resseach before to write your baseless argument, I'll be honest: we really don't care.

But that's the point. A potential customer is not going to take 20 mins to do "resseach" on a game when he can check out 5 other games in the store in that time. It's the job of the store page to provide enough initial info to allow customers to make an informed decision regarding the purchase.

This is friendly advice for the devs from someone in the field of commerce and IT. Right now, your game screams "I'm a modded version of Stardew Valley" even if it isn't, and I know it isn't. But others don't. Do you want to make your game more recognizable and memorable? Add your own special touch to the art. First impressions are everything.

The fact that this was my initial message would have been obvious to anyone who read my previous comment(s). Of course, a mindset of "something I like is being attacked, to arms!" is always an easy way out.

The other guy, Philtre was more constructive in explaining the difference, though I object to the claim of a "mild similarity" between the graphics of Stardew and Travellers. A mild similarity is what's between Terraria and Starbound. Here it's more like "an exact carbon copy". And if Philtre is right about gameplay differences, that just makes this egregious graphical similarity all the more tragic, because it shoehorns the game into a Stardew copy in people's eyes.