While in recent updates Valve have stated that anything is now officially allowed on the Steam store unless it's illegal or straight up trolling, it would seem there has been an instance in which a crack has been formed in Valve's Steam pipes. This has resulted in Steam developer Garnudo Games becoming the center of attention for some community members and not necessarily for good reason.
Garnudo Games' title It's good to be a pirate RPG was the first of Garnudo Games' titles to be called out by the Steam community and the supposed original developer as being stolen from RPGMaker.net user Rebezion. The allegations stemmed from a Steam community hub discussion created by Steam user Graye007 in which Graye007 alleged that the game was making usage of stolen assets from Square Enix's Lufia 2 with the user citing similarities in the environmental design and sprites between the two games.
The thread currently lacks any form of response from Garnudo Games, however, a Steam user by the name of Rabbit entered the thread claiming that the game posted to Steam by Garnudo Games was, in fact, their own game that Garnudo had lifted from the site RPGMaker.net. Writing in the Steam discussion forum, Rabbit stated the following:
this guy is a fraud trying to sell work of 3rd parties.Rabbit then links to the game's RPGMaker.net page which shows it was posted to the site in 2009 and posted by user Rebezion (Rabbit on Steam.) The page has had its download ability removed by the developer in response to Garnudo Games' reposting of the game to Steam and also to avoid any legal issues with Square Enix for making usage of Lufia 2 assets. The description of the game has been replaced with a message reading:I am the creator of this game. And yes, it sure contains rips and lufia2 tileset. Good notice on that. This is very old game that I created in RPG Maker just for fun. This game is not meant to be "sold" in the first place. It was made for RPG Maker community as freeware and fun spare time project.
Original project is free fan game...Gameplay length is 20minutes. This guy just collected freeware games from various sources and uploaded them to Steam for cheap prices.
I sent ticket and reported this guy. I am aware my old fan project is using lufia tileset, but it was never meant to left gates of Rpg maker community. I am willing to remove the project entirely.
I can't remember if I knew it back then or where I got that RM tileset. It was from times when I just created small games for fun in spare time. And I couldn't drawn or do any form of art.
I removed download of this game because someone else tried to sell it over Steam....In addition to leaving comments on both Steam and RPGMaker.net, Rabbit/Rebezion went to Twitter as well to further spread the news that Garnudo Games had plagiarized their work.Reality is that this game contained lufia tileset, I can't remember if I knew this when I created this game or not. Fact is that it got "commercialized" by scammer. I reported this guy and due to this reason I decided to take action myself and to remove this free original file here as well.
https://twitter.com/PixelABCD/status/1054675239991496704
Once news of this spread, more Steam community members and users on RPGMakerWeb.com did more digging and found that It's good to be a pirate RPG may not be the only instance of Garnudo reposting another developer's work. What follows is a list of Garnudo Games' Steam game listings that have been confirmed to have been taken from other developers alongside citations towards the sites they were taken from:
- Prison Break RPG - Prison Break by railgun545 on rpgmaker.net
- Island Sky RPG - Island Sky by Ocean on rpgmaker.net
- Stationary - Stationary by lonacer on rpgmaker.net
- Lost and Found RPG - Lost & Found by AmandaJackson on rpgmaker.net
- The Blight - The Blight by Monkeydesu on rpgmaker.net
- Orpheus - Orpheus by Almagesto on rpgmaker.net
- Sunshine RPG - Sunshine by quillandpaper on rpgmaker.net
- Three Treason Theories RPG - Three Treason Theories by Treason89 on rpgmaker.net
- Shadows Light RPG - Shadows Light by joshharbin on rpgmaker.net
- Slimes RPG - Slimes by sempersapiens on rpgmaker.net
- Inside - Inside by UlrichBR on RPGMaker.net
Looking further into the rest of Garnudo Games' library as a whole, it will become apparent that Garnudo Games have posted a mass quantity of titles to the Steam store in a short amount of time. Garnudo's first game launched to Steam on September 11th, 2018 which was titled Alien Invaders. In total, in just over a month's time span, Garnudo Games have posted a total of 34 games to Steam. The reason that these games have been released in such rapid succession is that none of the games posted are original work and are instead asset flip titles, similar to Suzaku Fly VR that replaced It's good to be a pirate RPG.
Just using a few examples from Garnudo Games' extensive library:
- Alien Invaders is an asset flip of Invasion! (8bit 3D Arcade Shooter)
- Infinite Road is an asset flip of Branches
- The Ninja Path is an asset flip of Fatty Ninja
- Be the King is an asset flip of Kings - Card Swiping Decision Game Asset
- Medieval Battle Simulator is an asset flip of Battle Simulator
Delving more into the library of games that Garnudo Games has, it shows that they have had numerous games launch on the same day, with 5 games that were set to be launched on the 14th September and 10 games that were set to launch on the 19th October. Like many of Garnudo's games the ones on October 19th missed their release date, instead, Garnudo Games released all their games that had missed a release date on October 25th, creating a large influx in asset flips and stolen projects on Steam on that date.
In addition to Garnudo Games' Steam catalog being riddled with asset flips and stolen games, the developer(s) received criticism from indie developer Daniel Steger, developer of Mount Your Friends and Mount Your Friends 3D: A Hard Man is Good to Climb with the developer going to Twitter, criticizing Garnudo's large release influx and also calling the developer out on the fact that on their game Inside they link to the largely popular and critically well-received 2016 Inside, making the game boast a fake Metacritic rating.
https://twitter.com/StegerGames/status/1055990459422650368
We reached out to Garnudo Games well in advance to publishing this piece but they have declined to respond to us. If they do get back to us, we will update the piece with further information.
