Another day, another shovelware game that plagiarizes another developers work.
In this case, we have Diablo_IslanD (with a backward D!) from developer and publisher Victor Studio, in their only listing on Steam. Diablo_IslanD is, according to the developers " a real adventure island survival game" where players only have one hour before they die, unless they find a "Throne of Life" on their island, which grants them longer life they inject a life crystal into it.
The description, written in broken English, contains several emoji pictures and explains the game's backstory, but the game itself is pretty much plagiarizing the work of Blizzard's Diablo and WarCraft series. Most of the assets in the game, such as the user interface, in-game characters, the graphical engine, are lifted directly from Diablo III, and various art assets and locations from Warcraft III and World of Warcraft.
The game is scheduled for a September 2019 release, but it will likely be only a matter of time before the game is removed completely from the Steam store.
Quick Take
Normally I wouldn't report on what is ostensibly a Chinese knockoff game, but the fact that it has a page on Steam for people to check out on their own is frankly baffling. A ton of shovelware already exists on Steam due to a lack of curation, but something with blatantly ripped assets making it this far is rare indeed.It's also not unusual sadly. One of the most famous examples of a game that plagiarized most of its assets was Limbo of the Lost, a PC game released in 2008 that had stolen assets from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Thief, World of Warcraft and even movies such as Beetlejuice and Pirates of the Caribbean.
While Diablo_IslanD is not as egregious as Limbo of the Lost since that was briefly sold commercially, it's a shame that there is less scrutiny over such games on platforms like Steam. This is one of the major problems that the platform will need to address going forward, though the chances of a game like Diablo_IslanD being released are slim in the first place.
What are your thoughts on all of this? Should Steam have a tighter grip over obvious plagiarization? Leave your comments below.