Claims of "Ripoff"

[One Old Soldier]

Before we begin, let me state that I was and remain a huge fan of the "Pandemic" flash games released by Dark Realm Studios.

Let me also state for the record that I am in no way affiliated with the devs for Plague Inc. That all being said, lets begin.

The differences between this game and Pandemic can seem pretty vague at first glance, take on the role of a virus and kill everyone. But when you actually get into playing the game there definetly seems to be more here than in other games in terms of how it can play out.

The 2 biggest examples would be the "Bioweapon" and "Nanovirus" (at the moment anyway, as I've yet to see any further). The Bioweapon is designed from the ground up to grow more lethal over time without the need to invest in symptoms, however this can lead to your hosts dying faster than they can transmit the virus. This means you have to not only have to invest in increasing the virus's infection rate but also limiting it's lethality at the same time.

With the Nanovirus you're discovered from the get-go. You have no time to build up infections and then roll into killing everyone, the timer is on from the get-go, so you're fighting against the clock not just to infect but kill everyone too.

The other original feature is co-operating illnesses, or "Bonuses" if you will. These are hidden events that can occur when your illness develops 2 specific symptoms, for example "Walking dead" can come from your illness gaining Insomnia and Fatigue traits. This event causes people to become EXTREMELY lethargic and thereby lowering the cure's discovery rate.

I've seen mention of another event in the achievements that leads me to believe you can infect sharks and cause them to attack people more commonly, raising your lethality, I personally think this is a nice touch that it actually EXPLAINS these and gives the game a little more depth.


That aside, I do agree with players that purchased Plague Inc on the Android that they should be willing to release either updates for the 'droid version or a modest discount for their fanbase. I never bought it there myself and I never saw the interest in gaming on tablets but it seems like alienating one's fans by releasing a 1.5 version of the game they don't get.

[PooFlinger]

thread closed

[One Old Soldier]

I'm quite certain there are far more hateful threads here that will be locked or closed long before this one.

[Genesta]

Calling this a pandemic clone is like calling a first person shooter a "doom clone".

[Chrono]

For the record, Dark Realm raged for a while at Plague Inc's initial release on twitter, going so far as to tweet people who reviewed the game (and gave it better scores than Pandemic 2.5) that it was a ripoff. This prompted more than one article, and he eventually seems to have given up and resigned himself to the fact that Plague Inc. is a better game, given Dark Realm's nigh complete radio silence on his forums since the Pandemic 2.5 1.1 update...2 years ago. A game which, for the record, never saw PC release.

By contrast, Plague Inc.'s devs have been vocal, active in the community surrounding the game, acceptive of suggestions, and constantly putting out new content.

Who is the worse dev team here?