Unomelon, the developer of Minecraft-inspired sandbox game Allumeria, says a DMCA from Microsoft, evidently related to Minecraft, got the game removed from Steam.
“The Allumeria Steam page is currently down because Microsoft has filed a false DMCA claim on it,” Unomelon said on Bluesky on Tuesday. “They sent an email earlier today claiming that this screenshot infringes on their copyright. I am taking a moment to figure out what my path is going forward, will update soon.”
The screenshot in question (above) is a simple wide shot of a forest filled with birch trees, what look to be oak trees with green and autumnal leaves, and a few pumpkins and weeds checkering the grassy dirt. There are definitely some similarities to Minecraft; if you told me this was a screenshot of a Minecraft mod, I’d probably believe you, but that’s true of many voxel-based games, including Hytale.
It looks like Minecraft bro turn off your reality distortion field
Did you even look into it or did you just do what the AI generating the DMCA did and looked at a singular image and decided it looks like Minecraft?
I’m not arguing about whether the copyright claim is legit. I’m saying that claiming the picture in the post doesn’t look like MC is a questionable opinion at best.
Which is an irrelevant point because it’s a singular image, and one that is depicting only nature which by nature (pun wasn’t intended) is generic. And to prove my point what is the first game that comes to mind when you see this image?
None in particular, but I don’t have experience with triple-A games enough to know about this artstyle
Well that’s pretty much my point. None come to mind because it could be any game with a “realistic” forest. The same way you could take a forest photo in a random block style game and it could come out looking like Minecraft. One nature image from one game looking like a nature image from a different game doesn’t mean anything.
I get your point, but there are some pretty specific similarities, notably:
All of which are featured prominently in the screenshot. There are differences-- taller trees, more small vegetation, different grass block color variation, colored and differently-modeled leaves-- but it’s more similar than other voxel-based games I’m familiar with. Maybe I don’t play many mc-likes, but other voxel games like Fractal Block World, Teardown, that foresty one with the tiny voxels (forgot the name), Lucid Blocks (the other voxel game by this same creator(!!) about a liminal world), and even Hypixel have more notable differences than this screenshot does. Maybe there’s more to the game that’s different, but this particular screenshot looks like lightly modded MC.
You do realize every specific similarity you brought up also applies to Hytale and Vintage story (except for the pumpkin part because in Vintage story they don’t grow in the wild). Could it be that there’s a completely different reason those similarities exists?
Perhaps grass texture with the side showing dirt just looks visually more appealing than an entirely grassy block? Pretty much every minecraft-like game does this. Even Terraria does the same thing in a 2D space.
As for pumpkins and trees. Pumpkins in the real world also grow in groups. If we consider the fact that the pumpkin has to be a cube there’s nothing specific about it growing in the forest in clumps, that’s just imitating the real world. Similar thing with trees. Most trees also grow from a single trunk that’s sprawls wide at the top. That’s just how trees are.
And what even is “minecraft-like” terrain generation? I’m pretty sure Minecraft has gone through at least 3 different variations of world generation. The latest version of Minecraft world gen looks nothing like what is generated in Allumeria, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the opposite because Minecraft latest world gen is very refined and Allumeria simply doesn’t have that level of refinement in its world gen. Allumeria world gen is closer to the alpha/beta version of Minecraft world gen.
What I’m getting at is that the specifics in that single image can be what make it look like it’s Minecraft, but there’s a reasonable explanation for all of those things and any resemblance ends up coincidental. It looking like Minecraft is just as coincidental as my picture looking like KCD.
Well, yeah. I’m not arguing that they actually copied Minecraft. I’m arguing that they ended up in a visually similar place. Which it doesn’t seem you disagree with?
My point is that it can be true that the screenshot looks like Minecraft without the game actually being an MC ripoff.
And as an aside, Terraria being a 2d game has different considerations for their visuals. You’re basically getting xray vision into each block. The sides of terraria blocks do have grass, but unlike in MC or Allumeria you can also see the dirt inside the block.
It does look like minecraft with a texture pack and shaders. Though, the trees look skinnier than normal.
Hytale looks like Minecraft with a texture pack and shaders. Every Minecraft inspired block based game looks like Minecraft with a texture pack and shader.
Oh and MS just withdrew their copyright claim because it was bullshit from the start.
And an Chevy el Camino looks like an ford ranchero. Not sure why you are so upset someone can reconginize the similarities. And yeah you cant just copyright things that just ‘look similar’ weird i know.
Because it sets a really bad precedent. It’s the equivalent of looking at an eastern-european forest in a game and being “that game is ripping off the Witcher 3”. No, that’s just how forests look like in the real world. And that’s just how scenery looks in a block game. Are block games not supposed to have forests and caves in their games because Minecraft popularized them first?
A bad precedent? Like people finding common attriubutes and reconginizeing their source of inspiration? Lol Do you also think its a bad precedent when people look at OpenTTD and say “boy, that looks a lot like TTD” even though legally they are two different entities.
There’s a difference between saying something is inspired by X vs saying something is copying X.
OpenTTD is a great example because it has its own selection of art assets that look like the original, but aren’t copying the original art. The open art assets are inspired by the original. But OpenTTD doesn’t come with the original assets nor can it make exact copies of the original assets because that would be copying the original.
I’m not against being inspired by something, Allumeria dev has been pretty open that the game is inspired by Minecraft. But the people I’ve been arguing with here have the opinion (at least it seems to be that way) that Allumeria is copying Minecraft. It is a bad precedent to say Allumeria is copying Minecraft (not just for Allumeria but a lot of Minecraft “clones” because the blocky style limits quite a lot of what you can artistically do) and it would be a bad precedent to say openTTD assets were copying original TTD assets, because that could be grounds for copyright which could lead to openTTD assets having to be scrapped.
Im old enough remembering when terraria was called “2D minecraft”. Its all pointless arguments.
I’m all for new takes on the block game (been looking forward to Hytale and will definitely give it a go sometime in the near future) but after watching the trailer…
It would be hard for me to tell this isn’t Minecraft if I didn’t watch or look into the game on a semi regular basis. It looks incredible derivative.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily in need of the copyright strike I don’t know the rules, but I’m not surprised it got one.
So. Immediate feelings of outrage followed by a mental shrug post trailer viewing.