Indie dev accused of stealing Elden Ring animations removes them from game

Last week saw the release of indie soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken. In case you're unfamiliar, the open-world action RPG has been developed and published by Archangel Studios, and is set in a dangerous land known as the Omnistructure, which is full of lethal enemies and huge boss fights.

Even from the game’s description alone, I’m sure that Bleak Faith: Forsaken’s Soulsborne-inspired roots are very apparent, but when you put the title side by side with Elden Ring, it appears that more than just the vibes of FromSoftware’s game have been borrowed. As PC Gamer reports, soon after the game’s release, players quickly flagged the fact that certain animation assets seemed to have been copied from Elden Ring. The devs denied stealing the assets, and explained that they’d bought them from Epic Games’ Unreal Engine Marketplace.

Take a look at the trailer for Bleak Faith: Forsaken below.

The devs reportedly reached out to Epic, but the company’s response stated that “Epic is not in a position to independently verify [if sellers have appropriate rights to upload their content], and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content”. As PC Gamer writes, the assets are no longer available to buy from the Marketplace, and Archangel Studios has announced that it’s removing them from Bleak Faith: Forsaken, too.

“[Epic's response] is not satisfactory for us and so we have taken the decision to replace the assets purchased from the store over the next several days,” the studio wrote in a statement posted to Steam on 13 March. “Some changes we included in the recent patches, and more are coming in the next few days. Certainly this has been a huge lesson for us and hopefully other indie creators out there too that assets on these storefronts seemingly cannot be purchased in good faith.”

In a statement released to PC Gamer, Archangel Studios thanked players for “bringing the issue to light”. The studio wrote: “The utilisation of stolen assets is unacceptable, and we hope other indie creators won’t ever find themselves caught up in a similar situation. Asset marketplaces are a critical resource for development teams, particularly those on a minimal budget. We hope the proper vetting and review protocols are put into place soon to provide verified assets for creators of all shapes and sizes to use on their upcoming projects.”