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.
Microsoft can and will suck my girldick, non-consensually if I have to
all because of a screenshot of birch trees
Worth noting, that image was given as an example of how the game looks similar to Minecraft. It was not the basis of the complaint. Microsoft also claimed the gameplay is stolen as well, according to Valve. So it’s definitely not about the trees themselves.
This Reddit post has the actual email from Valve to the dev.
I think this is definitely not a fight Microsoft can win (without a war of attrition I mean), and they seem to agree because they revoked the complaint by now. But there’s other blocks not featured on this image that would make a much stronger case imo. Stone bricks and planks look identical imo and definitely can be made unique looking if the dev wanted to.
Gameplay can be copied just fine, anyway. In fact, most games are just copying the gameplay of something else (not least of which are the THOUSANDS of Minecraft clones that play the same, but have their own aesthetic). This game looks exactly like Minecraft, tho, and it could very easily be confused for Minecraft. That is going to be more damning for the dev than the mechanics.
Of course. I was just bringing it up as a supporting argument to why the DMCA isn’t specifically about that image or the trees on it.
But yeah, gameplay isn’t protected by copyright, so that argument from microsoft is just bogus.
Is there a legal precedent on how copyright can be used against game clones?
I know that there is for board games, and there it says that the art and the rulebook cannot be identical, but that game rules aren’t protectable. So it’s basically the same level of protection that e.g. a painting would have.
If the same thing holds true for video games, then “The gameplay being similar” shouldn’t matter at all, and the only question is whether the art is too similar.
Considering that the art for voxel games is limited by technicalities (1m size blocks are required by the gameplay) and the low-resolution texture art style, I would naively guess that there’s not much room for differentiation and thus unless the textures are actual 1:1 copies of minecraft textures, there’s not much that can be done there either.
There aren’t a lot of ways you can draw a low-resolution square birch texture.
The gameplay being too similar is a bogus argument Microsoft’s AI probably snuck in there. I mentioned it to support my point that the DMCA complaint isn’t about the birch trees specifically, but that’s definitely not an argument that would have worked out legally for Microsoft.
Patents could work out, like for Nintendo in the Palworld case. But DMCA is a copyright dispute, patent law doesn’t apply here. And who knows if they even have any relevant patents to accuse this game of violating.
It really looks like Minecraft tough, you showed me those pictures and I wouldn’t have ever guessed it’s from other game than Minecraft.
Wait until they figure out hytale released a similar looking game
That’s what they’re doing here. They can go after a smaller studio gain precedent then go after the larger Giants like hytail which is owned by riot. They need some legal ground first to do that.
riot bought hytale but then sold it, it’s no longer theirs
this is almost certainly an ai tool run amok, not a deliberate attempt to stomp on the little guy.
Oh i missed that bit of news. I’m glad the original owners have control of that!!
Definitely looks far too much like minecraft to seem interesting at all, regardless of legal concerns. We don’t need more minecraft.
And the developer who spent time on this, should just listen to you, because you are an expert on games that people want to play. Like McDonald’s is the only restaurant you need. I hope he doesn’t listen to morons though
Actually the developer has been pretty open that while Minecraft was their inspiration the game the reason they started working on Allumeria is because in their eyes Minecraft has almost fundamental design flaws that Mojang are unwilling to fix. And while Minecraft was part of their inspiration another part of inspiration was Terraria and to directly quote the developer:
You could say that I try and take the gameplay of Terraria and combine it with the 3d block based world of Minecraft
So I don’t think the game counts as “More Minecraft” because the developer gameplay-wise is taking a lot more inspiration from Terraria than Minecraft.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now I see a minecraft clone.
Microsoft, evidently related to Minecraft
Bruh, they’ve owned it for like a decade at this point. Even if someone was wholly unaware of Minecraft, it would be one of the first things to come up on a cursory search of the game.
The DMCA claim was evidently related to the Minecraft IP. It’s not suggesting that Minecraft is unrelated to Microsoft.
Sniff It smells like birch up in here.
That’s not just similar to Minecraft - it’s nearly identical. I’m not sure that the DMCA notice isn’t justified. I don’t know the law well enough to judge where the line between legal and illegal Minecraft clones is.
Doesn’t matter. Copyright protects identity, not likeness. Valve even says in the email to the dev that Microsoft said they outright stole Minecraft’s exact assets. Because just looking the same isn’t copyright infringement.
Microsoft also complained about the gameplay being stolen too, which doesn’t fall under copyright at all.
So the DMCA definitely wasn’t justified, no.
Minecraft is an infiniminer clone, it should be shut down ASAP.
Because it’s a voxel Birch or because you feel the texture is derivative and pixel similarities show glaring similarities leading to the belief the creation of the assets were based on MC textures?
A DCMA from a company representing Mojang got Luanti (formerly Minetest) taken down once before because they thought it infringed. After challenge it was later found it was bullshit.
It’s not just the tree - it’s the whole scene. (Complete with random pumpkins that you wouldn’t ever include unless you were deliberately copying Minecraft.) As I’ve said, I don’t know if that’s illegal but it’s certainly derivative enough that I have no sympathy for it.
deleted by creator
Minecraft copyright doesn’t cover the entire genre of block-based sandbox pixel art games. Minecraft isn’t even the first in that genre, even if it’s the most popular by a wide margin.
Unless Microsoft can prove that one of the textures started by copying a Minecraft texture, or that substantial bits of code are copied from Minecraft, there is no claim.
Indeed
And theres only so many ways to make a low pixel square look when you wanna make it look like a birch tree
Hytales birch trees are just more gray, and dont have white/black contrast
Same leaf color though
There is nothing literally taken from minecraft. All the textures are original, and not even that similar to minecraft. I’ve talked with people like you before who just has no fucking clue about something that is so obvious to just about everyone else when it comes to stuff like this. It’s very clearly NOT minecraft, nothing in anything shown in the images or anywhere else from the game gives any hint at stolen models, textures etc. There are tons of block games like this and many that look way more similar but those have never gotten a DMCA.
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?
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.
Curious what your thoughts are on Vintage Story, Hytale, Castleminer Z, etc…
The style is similar to Minecraft, the rest just happens in nature. I took a walk in my woods last fall and saw oak and birch and even… pumpkins
Minecraft has red leaves?
If the DMCA is not sent by Microsoft, it doesn’t matter. You can’t file one on behalf of someone else.
Who needs Minecraft? Play Voxelibre instead!
Lol. Birch trees are the most despised tree by most Minecraft players.
Why?
The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.
What’s wrong with birch trees?
The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.
I am old enough to be hyped when birch trees were added. I love birches trees because that hold a core memory for me.
Huh. I just looked it up and apparently birch was added just about a year before I started playing. Crazy how we assume everything that was in there when we started has “been there forever.”
Jungle wood hater here. No reason to use it. Just leave the jungles alone!
Burn them to the ground to expose the hyper-green grass blocks below! (/s… maybe)
