Archangel Studios, the indie development team behind Bleak Faith: Forsaken, recently released statement of accusation what it stole Elden Ring animations, promising to replace them “within the next few days” and presenting criticism against Epic gamesbecause he purchased said animations from the Epic Developer Marketplace.
Archangel Studios previously reached out to Epic and released their response in this recent statement. Epic essentially absolves itself of blame by arguing that there are numerous third-party sellers on its marketplace, and it is the seller who must guarantee to Epic that they own the rights to the assets they are selling. Epic claimed that it was “unable to independently verify such rights” and that it “makes no such guarantees to purchasers of content”.
Archangel called the response “unsatisfactory” and pledged to replace assets purchased on Epic Marketplace “within the next few days.” The developers said that they have already made some changes in the latest patches, but more will be coming soon. Finally, they state that this should serve as a lesson to other indie creators, as “storefront assets don’t seem to be bought in good faith.”
A few days ago, the above video went viral from a modder who gets the animation FromSoftware games The video shows the animation in Bleak Faith next to the Elden Ring animation and Dark souls 3and it was clearly seen that they were essentially identical.
Many were quick to accuse Archangel Studios of deliberate theft, but it seemed that the developers simply purchased them unknowingly, assuming that if they were on the Epic Marketplace, they must be legit. Clearly this is not the case, so as Archangel pointed out, indie developers need to be careful when looking at any type of asset store.
Bleak Faith: Forsaken is a Souls-like RPG that was released just a few days ago on March 10th for steam. It has the deep customization elements and relentless combat that are staples of the Souls subgenre, but it also adds some new elements like stealth and climbing.