Ark Survival Evolved sued Steam

The two companies behind the Dino-Megahit Ark Survival Evolved raised counterclaim against Angela Games, the makers of Myth of Empire. The Survival Game was a hit for a few days on Steam until it was taken from the platform for plagiarism allegations. Ark raises serious allegations against the studio and the China Giant Tencent.

That's the situation:

In November, the Survival MMO Myth of Empire appeared on Steam. The game was described as a mixture of Survival-MMO and Mount & Blade — Myth of Empire had about 36,600 users on the first day and was recommended above all fans of Ark: Survival Evolved and Rust Already after less than 2 weeks the game was disappeared by Steam. Later turned out: The developers of Ark Survival Evolved had accusations raised, the game has violated their copyrights, so Steam removed the game after the DMCA-Takedown from the store to examine the situation The developers of Myth of Empire explain they would have all rights at the game. There would be no doubt about it, you will explain that with Steam. Ark, however, said one was convinced that the developers had stolen the source code of Ark Survival Evolved

Myth of Empire wants to go back to Steam by court — fails

That's how it continued: Until then, everything ran without lawyers and set up only in a copyright complaint to Steam.

But the company behind Myth of Empire called a court in California in mid-December, which should allow the purchase of Myth of Empire in a one-piece order.

However, the demand for an injunction was rejected first because Snail Games presented a large amount of indexes, as the court was confident.

Seasons of Ark Survival Evolved want damage replacement and profits

This is now the latest development: In response to this input, the companies behind Ark Survival Evolved, in turn, filed a lawsuit against Myth of Empire.

It says:

Since the copyright complaint, Angela Games would have worked on it, evidence that the code was stolen to pay Of the 82 employees at Angela Games are 60 former employees of Snail Games (China), many of them terminated in 2019 and 2020 to work with Angela Games An employee had been responsible for Snail Games for saving the source code in a backup server in China, now also work for Angela Games.

The processes are accurately listed in a 39-page application (via Google Drive): An employee gained access to the source code in November 2018, copying game from China to a US server, leaving the company in March 2019 and then at Angela Games started — then you started to develop the game at Angela Games.

In their hurry, from the theft to benefit, the developers have also left non-functional elements in the code. There is no explanation that these relics are in code — except he was just stolen, it says.

What calls Ark? The demand for damages and want to have the profits that come in by selling Myth of Empire. In addition, the supposed code thieves should give up everything device with unauthorized code.

What Tencent has to do with it? The creators of ARK throw Tencent to hang in the number in it. To have an interest in Angela Games and that they allow the game to run on their server and do not consider the copyright complaint that would require to take the servers down.

Ark had even difficult past with lawsuits

This is the spicy thing in the case: Some veterans may know that ARK Survival Evolved has arising in difficult circumstances. The chief programmer and mastermind of the game, Jeremy Stieglitz, stood when he designed Ark, nor under a clause, which actually banned the work on the game because he had previously worked on another MMORPG.

The developer therefore occurred anonymous and sent his wife, a bakery Bessemer, and his former student buddy.

In 2016, ARK also produced allegations in the room, which would not have designed the Dino game itself, but employees of Trendy Games, the former company of Stieglitz.

This ended with a seemingly very expensive extrajudicial agreement, but over which one saved largely silence. Because the matter was apparently so expensive, and you needed money, the developers seemed eventually Snail Games, a Chinese company, and developed self-authorized clones of their game for the international market. Among them Dark & ​​Light and a free2play version of ARK for Asia.

So all of both situations are not comparable, but it is already exciting that ARK is now running into these problems — and the problems seemed apparently at Snail Games (China). So a little brings Ark's own past, because with Snail Games you would not really have come together without your own scandal: Ark Survival Evolved: The Gaming Scandal, nobody talks about