Well, at least there’s no NFT’s involved
It’s not too often that an actually sizeable game gets removed from a platform over copyright infringement, but that’s what just happened to the popular Chinese sandbox strategy game Myth of Empires. While the game’s development studio Angela Game has not revealed who leveled the DMCA takedown at them, signs seem to point to Studio Wildcard and Snail Games, respectively the developer and publisher of Ark: Survival Evolved.
Part of the reason for this might be down to the fact that at least one of the members of Angela Game is a former employee of Snail Games China, parent company of Wildcard. Said former employee seems to have had access to the Ark source code, and you can probably guess where that led. Angel Game was founded in 2020, and released Myth of Empires November 2021. And over the past month, Wildcard and Snail Games just couldn’t help but notice how… similar it was to Ark.
And so Wildcard took a look at the executable for Myth of Empires, and discovered that there were a number of exact matching class, variable, and function names. Which led them to believe that the Ark source code had been used for the game. They presented their findings to Valve on December 1st, with the game getting delisted on December 3rd. Valve also requested any hosting services linked to the game to stop supporting it. The alleged complaint made to Valve read:
Studio Wildcard and Snail Games USA Inc have a good faith belief that Myth of Empires was built by: (1) stealing the Ark: Survival Evolved source code and (2) using the stolen source code as the gameplay foundation for Myth of Empires. Key employees of the developer of Myth of Empires worked at the Chinese parent of Snail Games USA Inc and at least one of them had the credentials that enabled them to access the Ark: Survival Evolved source code.
Angela Game, however, refutes this being the case. From a post made on the Myth of Empires site on December 7th:
A few days ago, Steam received allegations of suspected copyright infringement concerning Myth of Empires, and in accordance with the DMCA and to exempt itself from liability, has temporarily removed Myth of Empires from its store. Our development team solemnly declares: Angela Game fully owns all rights and property associated with Myth of Empires and will actively respond to any doubts or allegations on this point. We are in active contact with Steam and are doing our best to restore the game to their store. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused players.
At the same time, we will continue to improve the overall optimization of Myth of Empires as well as maintain normal operations and development work. We are currently preparing a large number of content updates that cannot be brought online due to the current special circumstances, but players that have purchased Myth of Empires can rest assured that we are confident we will bring you a better gaming experience.
On the 8th, the following post on the game’s official Twitter account was made:
Currently, Myth of Empires is not for sale on Steam. However, the game is still playable to those that already own it. The question now is whether the issue will be resolved, and what form that resolution will take.
Source: PC Gamer
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