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.
This is why you use distinct art in a game and not something that looks close to something a mega corp owns. Like art style ip infringement is one of the easiest legal roads a corp can take to take you down. Since art style is subjective, it doesn’t need to be an exact copy to make the claim legally valid. As long as the claimant can claim that customers have confused the infringing art with that of the ip holder. Look I’m not defending MS’ actions. If we lived in a fair and just world this wouldn’t have happened. But we don’t, we live in the world these fucks have created. So either you fight them and “die” trying when these fucks take your game down or you could have used another art style and this wouldn’t have happened in the first place and you’d use the incoming revenue on something else instead of wasting it on a legal battle. I know this sounds defeatist but it’s just not a hill that’s worth dying on especially if you are a small indie dev. It’s not even an art style that is cool looking anyway who wants to be associated with the shit Notch made.