news

    Limbo of the Lost is one of those PC games you find while browsing through the game section at Wal-mart.  You pick it up and wonder, "Who would ever buy this?"  Then you put it down and never think of it again.  Chances are you've never even heard of Limbo of the Lost before this mess arose, and be thankful that you have not. 

     The controversy of the game does not lie in the nearly unplayable gameplay, but instead of what the game is actually composed of.  Seems as if the developers at Majestic Studios decided to take a day off...or several.  Majority of the game's backgrounds are blatantly stolen from different games.  Here's a few examples:

Limbo of the Lost

Oblivion

Limbo of the Lost

Thief: Deadly Shadows

The skulls on the bookshelves are stolen from Diablo II, seen again here in another example of thievery:

Limbo of the Lost

Diablo II

There are more and more screenshots available if you're looking for a good laugh.  The game's wiki entry provides an entire list of games stolen from.

    This is the first case of video game plagiarism that I can think of.  How did the Majestic Studios think that they could get away with this?  The funniest part of the story comes from an interview done with Steve Boris of Majestic Studios:

Gordon: During the long gestation for this game, what sort of changes have you made to bring it up to date.

Steve: All of the game (apart from initial background story and some character designs) had to be re-written, all the characters had to be created in 3D and animated, all the background scenes re-created, all the sounds, coding and music?..basically everything had to be redone or newly created for the PC version. This is not an old game that has been dressed up. This is the original concept, dusted off and re-created.

Ha! 

    As hilarious as this is there are a few studios who definitely are not laughing, and one who will be crying.  Finally after nearly three weeks of this plagiarism being initially discovered, Majestic Studios made this announcement:

"In response to the shocking notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.

Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorized copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the publication process.

To the best of our knowledge no one at Majestic, [European publisher] G2Games or [North American publisher Tri Synergy, Inc.] knew about this infringement and knowingly played any part in it.

We can only apologise to all regarding this issue, as a team we are shocked and mortified regarding these events and we continue to work with said publishers in order to rectify the issue."

    I'll keep you updated as to when Majestic Studios closes...I mean as this story develops.  For now I'll leave you with the ending "cinematic" of the game, which I receive secondhand embarrassment from...oh and spoiler alert:

Sources:

Gameplasma Gamesradar Richardcobbett Neogaf RPS Gamespot  Quandryland

Share this article: