Epic ‘not in position’ to check origins after Elden Ring cartoon scandal swallows grim faith: Daredevil

to update: After getting sucked into the Elden Ring anime imitation scandal, the three-person Archangel Studios team released a statement explaining how Bleak Faith: Forsaken ended up with identical origins to FromSoftware’s open-world RPG. Effectively, it made it clear that 10 percent of the game’s development was outsourced to Epic Marketplace assets, and that it bought the packs in good faith. Since escalating the issue to Epic Games, it has received the following response:

In accordance with the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace Seller represents and warrants to Epic that it has the appropriate rights to upload its Content. As with any Store that hosts Third Party Content, Epic is not in a position to independently verify such rights, and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of Content.

The assets have since been removed from the Epic Marketplace, and Archangel Studios is committed to replacing all of them in the game. The team explained in a statement:

[The response from Epic] Not satisfactory to us and so we made the decision to replace the store bought assets over the next several days. Some of the changes we’ve included in recent patches, and more will come in the next few days. That’s certainly been a huge lesson for us and hopefully other indie creators too that assets on these storefronts apparently can’t be bought in good faith.

Original article: Plenty of games leverage ideas and concepts from FromSoftware’s revolutionary gameplay formula, which Dark Souls popularized in 2011. This is so common, in fact, that there is now a whole cottage genre of “Soulslike” games. Bleak Faith: Forsaken, a Soulslike game released on March 10, is said to have taken it a step further, with its developer accused of “stealing” animations directly from the Elden Ring.

Developer of Dark Souls mods Meowmaritus called out the address on Twitteroffered some damning evidence and, unfortunately, got the game wrong in the process.

In response, a developer from Bleak Faith developer Archangel Studios issued a statement on Discord defending the inclusion of the assets, stating that they were purchased as part of a bundle obtained from the Epic Games Store.

The developer, under the username “überfaith42,” writes, “We’re always transparent about the Epic Marketplace using animations that are good and fit our theme. The rest I made – we just needed a little more variety, and I’m not an animator by trade, I had to learn for this game.”

A link to an Epic Games Store asset pack was provided, which the developer claimed came from the anime, but only links to a now “non-existent” page.

Archangel now claims the studio is working on alternate animations for the game, and überfaith42 followed up its Discord post with another, which reads, “I want to stress that this decision currently comes from a purely artistic perspective, as an artist I take pride in all of the craftsmanship and unique things I’ve created on Over these many years. I wanted the game to stand out and give its own sparkle in as many ways as possible. I certainly didn’t know that any of the animatronics were really like anything else, I just thought we were dealing with a legitimate entity and their work matched our vision of combat. If It turns out that this seller is illegitimate, we will all be victims of outrageous behavior.”

What do you think of this whole situation? Is it “theft” to use assets acquired through a legally purchased asset package? Do you think the asset pack has already been purchased legally? Let us know in the comments section below.