Coming soon to a Steam near you.
The success of Among Us has guaranteed that a line of copycats would inevitably follow, and out of all of the games that I’ve seen so far WhiteSquare may be the most shameless and unintuitive of the ripoffs. Their game is “Pretend” and it is in development by three college students who apparently want to start their careers off by being labeled tracers and, invariably, content thieves.
Pretend is a ripoff of Among Us and while it is true that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, WhiteSquare is definitely toeing a line on intellectual property theft with how the game steals not just the mechanics but the unique art style of the original game. That my friends can potentially get one hauled into court. There are already cases such as Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. that establish copyright infringement if a game clones the “look and feel” of another property.
Pretend steals the look and feel of Among Us. Just look at this.
Pretend is such a ripoff of Among Us that I was able to overlap the map in the promo and it looks like someone took the Among Us map and removed a couple of rooms while fiddling with the proportions to make it not blindingly obvious, while still being very obvious that it’s mostly just a cut and paste. The rooms aren’t the same names and sizes, but the similarities are blatant.
There’s also the factor that some of the mini-games look like they’ve been almost one-to-one ripped from Among Us. Please enjoy these two overlays.
Now the folks at WhiteSquare have anticipated and have referred to Pretend as being “heavily inspired” by Among Us. Which is completely true in the same sense that my dish of steak fetuccine in mushroom sauce was “heavily inspired” by this meal kit I bought and took home and cooked.
In case you think I’m being cute, here is an actual photo I actually took tonight of the actual fettuccine from that actual meal kit. All it needs is some salt to bring it together. Maybe a side salad.
Now WhiteSquare is a newcomer to the scene and they’re about to get their first lesson on how to come in guns-a-blazing and clip your forehead on the door along the way. Because it’s incredible that your first impression upon the world would be shamelessly following and ripping off the current fad. WhiteSquare will now be known as “those guys who ripped off Among Us” which not only sets up a hostile relationship for Pretend but also any game you decide to come out with in the future.
And this isn’t me suggesting or demanding that WhiteSquare should cancel Pretend, the reputation damage there is already done. Go ahead, make the game.
But what do I know, I literally cook steak fettuccine for an article gag.
MMO Fallout 