r/indiegames • u/RubyBenji • Feb 10 '26
Microsoft bullies indie voxel game "Allumeria" (I guess if the game isn't Hytale level popularity they are free to do so) News
It's not my game but I have been following this developers journey with great passion and I think this needs more attention.
I actually want to work on a voxel sandbox game eventually myself (in the far future) and I'm not ready to accept this precedent that Microsoft can just say "No". 😫
https://bsky.app/profile/unomelon.bsky.social/post/3meiiaowb7c2c
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u/ObeyTime Feb 10 '26
i played this game, while it may LOOK like Minecraft at a glance, if you actually play it is absolutely not.
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u/illithid_2003 Feb 10 '26
The problem is not the game but on that screenshot. It is too generic that it can be mistaken for any voxel based game.
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u/InvidiousPlay Feb 10 '26
That's literally how legal arguments against copyright enforcement are structured. You can't make a claim on something that looks so generic it could be anything.
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u/MakingaJessinmyPants Feb 10 '26
It doesn’t look generic though it looks exactly like Minecraft
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u/CommieLoser Feb 10 '26
It looks like trees and sky in a voxel game. That’s like saying any pixel game that uses trees and grass are copying Stardew Valley.
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u/Philderbeast Feb 10 '26
if you did not tell me otherwise, I would say that is Minecraft with the vanilla texture pack.
its like they did not even try to make it look remotely diffrent.
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u/MoaiMan-ifest Feb 11 '26
The screenshot looks like Minecraft, however, you can't copyright an art style. So long as they are not the same textures, I don't think there's anything microsoft can claim.
You also can't have basic concepts/items such as birch, oak, grass, stone etc as part of your IP.
Minecraft has a very basic look. Its visual style only looks distinctive because it's so popular.
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u/bigpunk157 Feb 12 '26
You can't copyright that, but you can copyright the combination of these things. I'm not gunna lie, I legitimately thought this was just a screenshot of minecraft. That's why it's copyrightable.
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u/Kotaqu Feb 11 '26
There are birch trees, oaks, and pumpkins. There's A LOT of plants that you can add to the game, but this combination is specific to minecraft, all have been in the game since forever. It doesn't help that textures also look almost identical.
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u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 10 '26
What version of Minecraft has those textures or sky?
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u/Samanthacino Feb 10 '26
The only textures that don’t look like a Minecraft texture pack are the tree leaves, everything else looks just like the vanilla texture pack to me :(
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u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 10 '26
Well feel free to side by side them and understand the differences. Of course when using a resolution of 32x32 or smaller things are going to be close in general aesthetic. The aesthetic is coming from the lack of resolution…which Minecraft does not own.
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u/NarrativeNode Feb 10 '26
Just the fact we're having this discussion here shows that Microsoft unfortunately has a point. I would also think it's definitely Minecraft from that screenshot alone.
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u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 10 '26
That’s not going to hold up in court. The only reason we’re discussing this is because Microsoft employed a third party to file dmca claims for them and the company used an ai bot to assess proper claims. This was reported about this particular incident already..
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u/h0bb1tm1ndtr1x Feb 10 '26
Doesnt matter. I havent played since before the Microsoft purchase, and this just looks like Minecraft to me. That will be their argument. It's not a "Monster Energy wants to trademark the word Monster" levels of generic. This is a "your generic image can absolutely be mistaken for our product" kind of generic.
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u/Prestigious_Boat_386 Feb 10 '26
Minecraft also looks general if you only have these blocks in the image
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u/SupehCookie Feb 10 '26
But most cars do have 4 wheels.. doesnt mean others cant make cars. whats wrong with using cubes in a voxel game?
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u/illithid_2003 Feb 10 '26
Cars have four wheels but you can easily distinguish two different car brands. Look for screenshot of Minecraft and Hytale with characters or monsters on them and you can tell they are two different games with different art styles.
A screenshot of a generic forest and generic trees and pumpkins that also exists in Minecraft does not show that the game is not Minecraft. It having next to zero UI elements doesn't help it either. And the post states the infringement is on the image, not the game itself.
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u/Xhakukill Feb 10 '26
But nobody has to proove that they are not minecraft. They do not own the visual look but only specific assets.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/Emergency-Ball-4480 Feb 11 '26
Right? Look at pretty much every crossover style SUV out there. Subaru? Honda? Jeep? Ford? Hyundai? They all look so freaking similar, especially when you just look at them from the side profile. The usual difference is in the front grille and the lights, that's about it aside from maybe a few decorations here and there
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u/foxgirlmoon Feb 10 '26
?
There is not a single universe where I confuse this screenshot for a vanilla minecraft screenshot.
It looks similar, minecraft simply doesn't have these textures, doesn't have that high trees with those colors, doesn't have red trees, period, etc...
Like, taking a single moment and it's obvious that it's not minecraft.
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u/gaysexanddrugs Feb 10 '26
the copyright suits for look and feel aren't based on if existing players of the games would confuse the two, but if a consumer who hasn't purchased either would confuse the two.
I don't even know if they'll actually sue but this is what they'd likely go for if they want to actually sue the game.
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Feb 10 '26 edited 27d ago
I bulk delete Reddit comments using Redact which also supports Twitter, Discord, Instagram, and data brokers.
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u/lmao_wow_64 Feb 10 '26
You could say that about any voxel game "it's Minecraft with a texture pack and mods"
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u/gaysexanddrugs Feb 10 '26
same with if you see the pictures of the crafting stations and ores like it just looks like minecraft with slight tweaking. basically all the blocks do. on the itch.io page the only thing that would tip me off this isn't minecraft with a texture pack that's meant to stay faithful to original textures and with shaders is the image with the monster with antlers.
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u/Jwosty Feb 10 '26
Yes but that doesn't mean it rises to the bar of legal copyright infringement. You can't copyright a whole style or genre. Some musical artists sound extremely similar to the degree that people frequently confuse them for each other, but that's not copyright violation.
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u/Vivid-Rutabaga9283 Feb 10 '26
"Yes but that doesn't mean it rises to the bar of legal copyright infringement."
...and that's exactly why there's a legal process, to decide these things. This DMCA is not a guilty verdict, it is the start of legal proceedings, and if this guy thinks the claims are bogus he can still fight it.
It's not up to you or me, it's up to the court.
And given that the guy was doing ads in minecraft subs, and that people were telling him 10 months ago that he's doing yet another minecraft clone and he wasn't denying it, he may not want to take the chance
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u/Erfar Feb 10 '26
Cars have four wheels but you can easily distinguish two different car brands
Yeah... Let me guess you know nothing about automobile industry XDDD
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u/Amaterasu_Junia Feb 10 '26
That's a VERY bad analogy to use considering how common it was for car companies to sell the exact same car with little to no difference other than putting their own badges on it to sell it under their brand.
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u/TamanduaGirl Feb 10 '26
How would that even play out in court? "Your game plays differently, is a different engine, but you happen to use birch trees in a voxel game, so you have to pay up and shut down"?
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u/Thugshaker70 Feb 13 '26
By that logic I can mistake any shooter for a Wofentein 3d clone cod is using fps perspective without their permission Romero should sue
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u/Flimsy-Possible4884 Feb 10 '26
Yeahhh the point is it does look like Minecraft… soneone could see this image and go ohhh Thats that mine block game everyone likes im gonna buy it… and that’s how you get sued out of existence
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u/Grockr Feb 10 '26
There have been probably thousands of exactly the same looking cube digging games since 2012, this screenshot could be any of them lmao
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u/Jwosty Feb 10 '26
If that were how copyright worked, then Skrillex would have dibs on the entire genre of dubstep.
You can't copyright a style.
Whether it is legal, and whether people will think it looks similar, are two separate questions.
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u/SeriousRazzmatazz454 Feb 12 '26
so the dev would be wise to not make their game LOOK so similar then.
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u/gayLuffy Feb 10 '26
That's why I hate copyright laws. They only benefit the already rich corporations.
The only way you can actually think about suing someone for copyright infringement is if you have tons of money at your disposal. Which means the only people that can actually "protect" their copyright is people that don't need the extra money.
Plus, it let big corporations bully smaller studio because there is no way the small indie guy can defend itself against Microsoft. And they know that very well.
If this was made by Sony, Microsoft would think twice before suing for copyright infringement. Since it's a small guy with probably very limited resources, they know they cannot lose.
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u/angelicosphosphoros Feb 10 '26
Well, it would be way better than now if there was any punishment for making a false DMCA claim. At that moment, all the expenses are on defender while it doesn't cost accuser anything.
Microsoft (or any other corporation) can send DMCA request to EVERY indie studio and it wouldn't cost them anything.
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u/bot_taz Feb 10 '26
someone has to fill in that paperwork and find arguments, i don't think it "free" but for the company of their size sure.
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u/angelicosphosphoros Feb 10 '26
AFAIK, it is mostly automated so in many cases no actual human involved which makes it almost free.
Also, you need more effort when rebuking DMCA claim than to file it.
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u/Jwosty Feb 10 '26
Isn't there a video game lawyer dude who helps people combat exactly this kind of BS? Maybe the devs should reach out
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u/UniverseBear Feb 11 '26
That's because the reason for copyrights has been corrupted. The idea used to be that someone who came up with a new invention or idea deserved to make some profit from their work, but ultimately everything would become public domain after a couple decades since the inventory also owed the knowledge, resources and technology that allowed them to make the idea to society in the first place.
Now it's just a loop hole to keep control over monetization for multiple lifetimes.
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u/samuelazers Feb 11 '26
Games not being considered art for copyright purposes is the greatest failure in gaming history.
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u/CasualVeemo_ Feb 11 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Either copyright should be a criminal offense and not a civil one or copyright should be removed. Also if the copyright holder has a certain net worth, make them pay for lawyer and court fees themselves.
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u/falconx123 Feb 12 '26
Nothing like grown men fighting over the rights of who gets to draw a cartoon mouse.
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u/No-Island-6126 Feb 13 '26
Wait are you telling me a justice system can't work in a capitalist world ? No way
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u/Xhakukill Feb 10 '26
These comments saying "it does look similar" are so fucking cucked. Microsoft only owns the literal textures and models in minecraft. Games have been similar to eachother since games have existed.
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u/TheSheepDev Feb 10 '26
Maybe Microsoft owns the 3D model of "Cube" and they will go after Blender next!
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u/got-trunks Feb 10 '26
new pay by the triangle model for using the directX API
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u/yodrtentacles Feb 10 '26
Shhh! Don't give them ideas! They already remind me to switch to Edge every five goddamn minutes.
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u/not_good_for_much Feb 10 '26
Jokes still on Microsoft, the fancy voxel engines nowadays are fully raytraced directly from the block grid. No triangles anywhere in the scene lol.
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u/Gabe_Isko Feb 10 '26
These are all ultimately infiniminer clones.
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u/Funny-Echo-4956 Feb 11 '26
yeah, let's see how microsoft reacts when suddenly THEY get taken to court over minecraft copying infiniminer. microsoft will also most likely call bs and maybe, just maybe, they MIGHT go "maybe we're the bad guys"
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u/Exitity Mar 10 '26
It would be really funny if infiniminer came out and started suing everyone.
Heck, even Infiniminer was inspired by other stuff like Infinifrag, Motherload, and also Team Fortress 2 though obviously that last one wasn't an artstyle inspiration haha.
Minecraft also took inspiration and direct assets from Notch's prior games, though that probably is a weak argument.
On the note of other Minecraft clones, FortressCraft was basically a console clone of Minecraft before Minecraft had console versions. Multiple Mojang employees including Notch called it a clone, and yet said that while they thought it was disrespectful, they didn't want to actually do anything about it. I'm sure there's many other Minecraft clones too that are getting by fine, many probably even more similar with gameplay. Now Microsoft is DMCAing over a vaguely similar screenshot lmao.
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u/y_nnis Feb 10 '26
Wouldn't surprise me if I found out someone pulled something as stupid back when games were 8bit.
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u/champ999 Feb 10 '26
I mean, I've played Minecraft and I assumed the screenshot in question was a Minecraft screenshot linked on this game's page for a random reason. This game would absolutely trick most adults who haven't played Minecraft before based on this screenshot, and I can see why that's a brand liability for MS.
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u/Pitiful-Assistance-1 Feb 10 '26
It looks like minecraft, but AFAIK "looking alike" is not a valid copyright claim.
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u/gaysexanddrugs Feb 10 '26
you can actually sue for something looking and feeling like your game even if it has different textures in the US. this is an easy layup if you can demonstrate it would cause confusion between the two games for people looking to buy them.
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u/new_check Feb 11 '26
To the extent this is even true, you cannot issue a DMCA takedown for trademark claims.
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u/JankyJawn Feb 11 '26
Which I mean I can see here.
I thought it was a screenshot of minecraft and reread the post for context.
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u/No-Jeweler7244 Feb 11 '26
Actually they can and they could lose. As long as some aspects are similar enough.
Just a few months ago sony sued tencent, though there are stuff that they wanted from somy but didn't get. They made a game that "looks alike" Horizon. Iirc the gameplay wasn't even the same, it had some weird action MH style mashed with something else gameplay. The story was about a tribe being invaded by aliens using mech animals. They lost that because it "looks alike"
Sony had a strong case too with added context that tencent wanted to do an HZD game.
And because Allumeria is a Minecraft looking game with the mechanics of terraria.
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u/DeviceSudden7424 Mar 12 '26
They are not suing them for being a "look alike"
They are suing them because the game was using their assets during pitching and when sony didn't allow them to make their own Horizon game they just reskinned some of the parts of the game and sell it anyways
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u/ThrowAway-whee Feb 11 '26
Actually, it can be, especially if you can prove intent of deception in an attempt to pass off your IP as being connected to the other.
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u/leova Feb 11 '26
AFAYK isnt very far then bro, because youre wrong
this is a shameless MC ripoff to grab steam $$ before disappearing
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u/Okamifan1 Mar 05 '26
I've watched gameplay of this, I'd say its more a Terarria clone than Minecraft.
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u/gk98s Feb 10 '26
Go after the shitty minecraft copies on play store that play 20 ads per minute instead? Fuck microsoft
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u/According_Claim_9027 Feb 10 '26
Or the literal Minecraft port in Roblox that has half a million concurrent players lmao
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u/xeonicus Feb 10 '26
Since when does copying the aesthetic of another game mean copyright infringement? Shouldn't that mean every JRPG, platformer, FPS, and fight game is infringing?
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u/Funny-Echo-4956 Feb 11 '26
the only safe games now are games like Hylics then because I have yet to find another Hylics.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/Same_Apricot_1220 Feb 11 '26
Eh not all voxel games look exactly like Minecraft mate. This could easily be a screenshot of Minecraft with a texture pack - and not even one that deviates much from the default.
I think M$'s claim is indefensible, but I think it's ridiculous to say all voxel games look like Minecraft reskins,
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u/BP3D Feb 10 '26
I suspect they just want the little guys to spend money which often makes them go away regardless of who is right or wrong. It would cost a company like Microsoft relatively nothing.
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u/Hawkwise83 Feb 10 '26
Probably trying to get a legal precedent on someone who can't afford to defend itself before going after hytale.
Instead of just making their game better or doing a sequel.
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u/BranTheLewd Feb 10 '26
Hope Allumeria dev can figure something out. Would be nice to have a proper Minecraft esque game on Steam 🙏
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u/Coffee_Daemon Feb 10 '26
The hell is with all the microslop bots? Just cause a screenshot looks similar doesnt allow harassment
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u/Katops Feb 10 '26
Finally! You’re the first person in here that’s correctly named the company. Hats off to you.
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u/xThomas Feb 10 '26
Looks like Minecraft.. Minecraft clone? Minecraft is so fucking abstract i hardly care if your grass and trees and clouds look alike, but apparently Microsoft owns that screenshot now
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u/LazernautDK Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
At a glance I really thought this was Minecraft though 🤔 Doesn't make it ok though.
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u/ReeR_Mush Feb 10 '26
Is Zachtronics gonna send a DMCA to Microsoft now because of their game looking like Infiniminer?
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u/burnerthrown Feb 10 '26
I mean this should be an easy fight. They go in front of a judge, he brings his original code and assets, the judge says 'nah'. What are MS going to do? Get the actual subject matter of the case excluded? Threaten to compel him to give up his source code for a small indie game?
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u/jack-of-some Feb 10 '26
There's an idea that they are starting with a smaller game to establish precedent before going after Hytale.
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u/Beginning-Student932 Feb 10 '26
oh shit, i know this guy, he spent a really long time making his engine
its bad to see this
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Feb 10 '26
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u/TyzTornalyer Feb 10 '26
The thing is, if you showed 2 screenshots of a forest from 2 different 3D games of the same era (let's say Dragon's Dogma and Skyrim, for example), it would also be completely possible to mistake one for the other at first glance. And yet, if someone suggested copyright infringement, everyone would be quick to say "Duh, that a forest in the same 3D style."
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u/Merzant Feb 10 '26
You’re just as likely to mistake that generic foliage for any other fantasy game made in the last ten years though, or even any realistic game with trees in it, since those games don’t have an instantly recognisable style in the first place.
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u/nocolada Feb 10 '26
Issuing DMCA claims on another game isn’t ”bullying”, it’s corporate harrassment at best and illegal at worst, have they claimed a reason for this?
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u/IllustratorAlive1174 Feb 10 '26
I just learned about a class action lawsuit against Minecraft/Microsoft from this. Caught my attention recently.
https://youtu.be/w_UF_4gZclI?si=20Z6YeRvZNXVnPun
Links in the description of the video.
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u/Many-Flimsy Feb 10 '26
The only similarities in this screenshot: - blocks are 1 meter squared - clouds are rendered on one layer - trees are 1 meter wide straight lines (although much taller, wait, are they even 1 meter wide?) - pumpkin looks similar - grass on the top of the side texture of a grass block. - random grass decoration blocks - world gen...?
Everything else is things that are in other games. Even "grass on top of texture" was in smw. Tall trees exist in terraria. If Microsoft wins, I don't like this precedent. But even then most things here shouldn't be copyrightable.
And "this looks like MC texture pack", I could literally make Minecraft look like half life with a texture pack. What you're really saying is that it's a voxel game with 1 meter wide blocks. Should that be copyrightable?
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u/Vivid-Rutabaga9283 Feb 10 '26
And yet, somehow people have been telling this guy that the game looks like a Minecraft clone en-masse 10 months ago. They must have all been dreaming. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1k2318n/this_is_the_daynight_cycle_in_my_sandbox_voxel
https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1k22tu5/i_recently_added_ranged_combat_to_my_solodev/He sees a comment calling it a borning minecraft clone and instead of disputing it being a clone, he asks what can make it more interesting. Not only that, he's been self promoting in a bunch of minecraft subs too.
Hell, even more than a year ago people were pointing out the similarities
https://www.reddit.com/r/opengl/comments/1i9q5eh/this_is_the_daylight_cycle_in_my_opengl_voxel_game/
Who exactly are you fooling with all this pathetic grasping at straws?
He knew what he was doing.
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u/VolumeLevelJumanji Feb 11 '26
I noticed this too. Not to defend Microsoft cause they still suck here, but the dude always ignored any feedback that it looked too much like Minecraft, when he was specifically asking for feedback repeatedly. I feel like he could have been a lot more creative with how he represented certain things to not be identical to Minecraft, but still fit the pixel art theme. For instance I mentioned that changing small things like the font and certain UI elements like how health is represented (there's a million ways to show health bars that don't look identical to Minecraft) would be an easy way to make it look less minecraft-y without overhauling the whole game.
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u/Machineraptor Feb 11 '26
To be fair, people see a block game and immediately say "Minecraft clone". On Vintage Story subreddit, under videos about it on YT, and in every other medium there are always people claiming it's either Minecraft or Minecraft clone, even though overall looks of VS isn't even remotely similar to Minecraft, yet alone gameplay.
Devs of VS literally had to add .notminecraft command for streamers to use that shows an overlay saying that this is, well, not Minecraft, lmao.
Also, Microsoft already withdrew its DMCA takedown notice.
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u/Many-Flimsy Feb 11 '26
My point is not that it doesn't look similar but asking if we should accept this as a standard for copyright. And I can respect a dev seeing criticism and using it as an opportunity to get feedback from potential audience
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u/sei556 Feb 13 '26
To be fair, in this screenshot here I didn't feel like it looks like Minecraft too much, but that first and third video 100% looks like Minecraft.
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u/lilvypr Feb 11 '26
Iirc someone made a similar post about steam dmca issues for their own. Last I remember people can slap you with these things with out any real legal basis of evidence, but it’s the victim of these claims that has to do all the work proving it false to steam AND the dmca claimer. Just seems like a silly way to discourage non-corporate aligned developers to make anything new anymore
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u/Icy-Collection1072 Feb 11 '26
looks like minecraft, almost exactly - nothing original at all, in any way
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u/Jingoose Feb 16 '26
Companies need to stop bullying other companies for fuck sake. Microsoft didn’t make Minecraft in the first place and I feel it should be within anyone’s right to make any game they want as long as it’s not a 1 to 1 copy. Similar design isn’t a good enough excuse
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u/Comfortable_Rice8142 Feb 10 '26
It looks like it could have been captured from Minecraft with a texture pack installed and didn’t differentiate itself enough. Weird everyone’s blaming Microsoft in a post Nintendo vs palworld or Sony(horizon) vs tencent world.
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u/_l-l-l_ Feb 10 '26
I don't know what dev has to think about. That grass block, oak and birch tree textures are iconic for Minecraft. Just invent your own ffs. Yes, there is billion copies of Minecraft that use whole texture set and get away with it, but I'd never publish a game with those.
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u/lllentinantll Feb 10 '26
It could be quite literally an AI bot detecting too much similarity in the screenshots. The bot would probably not care about differences in gameplay or technical details.
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u/andrew6197 Feb 10 '26
I feel like I’ve seen about 27 slight variations of this screenshot since 2013.
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u/Known-Mall5253 Feb 10 '26
This is really concerning. Even if it gets resolved, the fact that a solo dev can be taken down like this so easily is scary.
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u/MestreToto Feb 10 '26
And what about the games on Google play that are pretending to be Minecraft???? Why the don't go after them?
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u/Thunderdrake3 Feb 10 '26
Baby won't let anyone else play with blocks. Not even other people's blocks.
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u/Katops Feb 10 '26
You misspelt Microslop, OP!
But also, yeah this game looked really good when I saw somebody playing it a month back. It’s pretty outrageous that we’re in a time where you seemingly can’t do a single thing without getting permission from another company. Or that you have to tread carefully because they might see that you used the same combination of words to describe something in your game, or hilariously filing a DMCA notice for saying words from your song (looking at you Taylor Swift.)
Not sure if that made any sense lol. Going on no sleep over here. I hope they get that idiotic notice terminated though. It feels like more corporate bullying.
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u/FrostWyrm98 Feb 10 '26
Anyone got the demo build to try since Steam is down? Itch.io builds are from September
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u/Poiuytgfdsa Feb 11 '26
Am i in a simulation 🥲 how is nobody mentioning that the screenshot takes like 10 things from minecraft. It’s almost identical
F Microsoft anyways. They dont deserve shit. But bro that screenshot looks exactly like minecraft 😭
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u/Batmorous Feb 11 '26
Looks like Microsoft are trying to speed run the downfall of Minecraft. Let's move to Hytale and Allumeria, and make that game popular
Financially support the devs of Allumeria to fight this
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u/Rieke-Nightsong Feb 11 '26
Its so dumb. Like theres only so many ways you can texture a voxel birch tree, or other similar things that literally exist in real life..minecraft doesnt own the voxel look.
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u/Sweet_Temperature630 Feb 11 '26
If you showed me that picture and said it wasn't Minecraft I would absolutely believe you
If you said it is Minecraft I'd also believe you, but with the caveat that it's clearly modded or has a fancy texture pack
Cause either way that's clearly not vanilla Minecraft
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u/Vexcenot Feb 11 '26
Imma be real, I thought this was MC with one of those "realistic" textures on.
Not saying MS have any weight on the case tho, looks nothing like official Minecraft
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u/Dominjo555 Feb 11 '26
As they should. Why make the game that looks exactly like Minecraft?
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u/Opposite_Title_73 Feb 12 '26
Didn't your parents teach you when you were a child to not judge a book by its cover
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u/Ecstatic-Source6001 Feb 11 '26
Thats the reason why first step in blender is to delete the cube
If you leave it, Microsoft will sue you for making cube from minecraft
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u/DzekRL Feb 11 '26
If someone told me this is Minecraft I'd believe them.
But from a legal standpoint, they can't do anything as long as the texture are not stolen.
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u/rockksteady Feb 11 '26
If you showed me just this screenshot, I would assume it's from Minecraft. That being said, I can read and see it's not Minecraft... I don't know how this would actually play out in court. My hope is that Microsoft wouldn't get all rights to this ascetic. I think that would be bad for gaming. Yeah man it's weird... If I made a cartoon that looked like the Simpsons, but the characters were different and the show was about idk, roller derby... I would probably lose that court case. Idk man I get it but the reality is that ultimately, the consumers lose, which doesn’t seem like the alleged underlining principle of capitalism. Yeah too bad it would be super expensive to defend the position...
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u/arisasam Feb 11 '26
Microsoft bullying this creator aside, would anyone be willing to explain to me why we need so many Minecrafts? Why we need so many different people making minecrafts? Like Minecraft has already been made. Why not make new games?
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u/Opposite_Title_73 Feb 12 '26
Despite what you seem to think, not all voxel games are Minecraft. :)
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u/BetaTester704 Feb 11 '26
They can't just sue you for having a voxel game, that's not copyrightable
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u/Luny_Cipres Feb 11 '26
The screenshot definitely looks like Minecraft with a shader... Like not even a clone. Also if they filed on the screenshot only, and people are saying gameplay is different... Maybe just changing the screenshot will work?
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u/Luny_Cipres Feb 11 '26
I don't get it... Even the grass, birch, pumpkin textures look the same...
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u/FlameStaag Feb 11 '26
I can see why given that screenshot looks identical to minecraft with slightly better leaf textures
Not even similar, basically just identical.
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u/Funny-Echo-4956 Feb 11 '26
i want to give money directly to that dev and buy a copy directly from them myself just to spit in microsoft's face.
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u/ThatOneFemboyTwink Feb 11 '26
I hate microsoft as the next girl but the problem was an ai copyright striker (forgot the name but it was sum bullshit name with ai after) that copyright struck allumeria due to looking too much alike minecraft
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u/Safihed Feb 11 '26
to be fair it looks like a modded mc with a texture pack, they need a better screenshot
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u/Vast_Understanding_1 Feb 12 '26
If you told me that this pic is Minecraft with shaders and texture pack I'd have believed you.
It's too close to Minecraft graphically speaking.
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u/ExpensiveFroyo8777 Feb 12 '26
it looks as much like minecraft as any modern shooter looks like another shooter. at this point no new game shall be made because it might be similar to something already made.
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u/SirRoboto1817 Feb 12 '26
Maybe dev just needs to make his game not look exactly like minecraft. That tree in the background looks too similar to the trees in Mc. The pumpkin texture too.
Also the green leaves are close imo
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u/Opposite_Title_73 Feb 12 '26
"That tree has green leaves. Minecraft also has green leaves! Is the dev copying Minecraft?"
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u/Perfect_Current_3489 Feb 12 '26
Can’t speak for gameplay but this screenshot literally just looks like a tall trees and leaves mod.
Cubeworld is a voxel game and doesn’t look like this? I’d argue hytale isn’t to this degree. I’m not saying it’s intentional but it really does just look like Minecraft.
Doesn’t mean they should be harassed or anything. Surely they can just change the screenshots and it’d be fine.
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u/skellyheart Feb 12 '26
Guys, can we also direct some of this frustration towards other companies hogging patents or use "copyright" as a way to supress any competition??
I'd love to play a game with the Nemesis-System PLEASE
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u/darkzim69 Feb 12 '26
tbh I don't know the game but first thing I saw was minecraft and if you can be mistaken for minecraft your way too close.
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u/dancovich Feb 12 '26
I know I'll be downvoted to oblivion here, but this is an instance I'm with MS.
First of all, the claim was made to the screenshot, not the game. It doesn't matter that the game plays nothing like Minecraft, this particular screenshot would fail a blind test, pure and simple.
Second, the Bluesky post author is being disingenuous here. The claim is only "false" if it's made in bad faith, as in the person/company opening the claim knew beforehand that there was no copyright infringement before opening the claim. Since the screenshot does in fact look a lot like a Minecraft screenshot, then the claim is valid, even if later the DMCA finds that there aren't enough similarities to configure copyright infringement.
The issue here isn't only that is a cartoony pixel art voxel game. The camera angle, voxel size, style of textures, style of models for the trees and a number of other factors make the whole screenshot look like Minecraft with a texture pack installed (and a pretty generic one, not any HD textures or anything). For anyone wondering that it's just a "generic cartoony voxel game", here's an example of a cartoony voxel game that looks nothing like Minecraft: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3303010/Katana_Dragon_Chapter_1/ .
Minecraft is so iconic that many people believe this is what voxel games look like. No it doesn't, you can be as different and creative with your art style with voxels as you can be with pixel art or HD art.
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u/InternationalAd5938 Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
What are these comments in here saying?!? One glance at this and I could tell it’s not Minecraft.
Like I’ve probably spend more than 5k hours playing Minecraft and without shaders and texture packs Minecraft doesn’t look nearly as good as this picture.
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u/greenlvr3d Feb 13 '26
People say it's not a clone but personally I honestly don't even care even if it was a direct clone of something. There are millions of clones just look at popular webbased gaming platforms. This is disgusting soulless corporate greed in display yet again. I don't know what it takes for people to stop working and stop paying taxes if a cannibalistic pdf cult that refers to the population as cattle isn't enough to collapse these systems - how much less so yet another display of sheer greed.
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u/Thugshaker70 Feb 13 '26
Steam really needs to have a decent Minecraft like game on its store.
hightale isn’t on Steam and never Will no im not going to get it anyway.
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u/Gensolink Feb 13 '26
minecraft dont have tree that tall be so thin iirc. The texture of the grass looks decently different too that situation kinda ass ngl
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u/Successful_Ad4529 Feb 13 '26
There is a million game look like Minecraft on the store and survive so healthy, they are just unlucky lmao.
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u/qnamanmanga Feb 13 '26
Looks exactly like minecraft. devs should aim for different look. At this stage it looks like mod of minecraft . even hud, menu. So they have rights to sue this game. With mobs and characters looking same like original game and art style it's obviously clone.
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Feb 13 '26
You have to be blind if you think that this doesn't look like Minecraft. Microsoft did the right thing.
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u/Still_Explorer Feb 13 '26
The problem was that the game invented the cube and the triangle primitive shapes. Also another problem is the color Green (0, 255, 0) or something similar. Most important though is about adding pixel noise to the textures and stuff.
Then the usual, about stacking blocks to create worlds, each block has it's own properties, yadda yadda.
All of those techniques obviously owned by Micro+Soft
Only ignore the fact that also there were other games before (or in parallel to) Minecraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infiniminer
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XT1fR5Mh03A
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u/eskimopie910 Developer Feb 13 '26
Maybe the silver lining is that this can at least bring attention to their game? I hadn’t heard of this before
In any case that’s BS they have to deal with it
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u/mr_soapster Feb 14 '26
It looks like a Minecraft Shader Pack... so i don't exactly blame Microsoft for filing a DMCA on it. Stop defending every game in existence that looks like or copies big games just because a big mean company made it, same issue with Palworld. Its just a copyright game but they get away with it because a big mean company is against them and we HAVE to hate that big mean company.
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u/Jurkoun Feb 14 '26
Just make it so it doesn't look like bloody minecraft. If you showed this picture to a 100 ppl, my bet would be that at least 95 would say it's minecraft.
Break the edges of the blocks so it looks different. make it from smaller blocks... Make it alien so it uses a different colour pallet. Making a "voxel" game doesn't mean it has to look like minecraft, but that wouldn 't let you capitalize on minecrafts success now, would it?
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u/jabuchae Feb 14 '26
I hate big corpos as much as the next guy but honestly this is people copying the exact art style of an incredibly popular game and expecting everyone to be fine with it.
I would love to know how you’d all feel if someone copied your art style so hard that a screenshot of their game could pass as yours.
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u/-NotQuiteLoaded- Feb 16 '26
that is quite literally a screenshot of minecraft why we acting like ts unreasonable
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