The new soulslike video game Bleak Faith: Forsaken has removed the assets it was accused of stealing from Elden Ring. However, Bleak Faith: Forsaken developer Archangel Studios claims it purchased the animations legally from a third party.After releasing on March 10, the soulslike stirred up controversy online when gamers pointed out the major similarities between the animations used by FromSoftware's Elden Ring and those present in the newly released Bleak Faith: Forsaken. The similarities were such that Archangel Studios was accused of stealing the assets. The indie developer has denied the accusations, pointing out that it purchased the assets from a third party at the Unreal Engine Marketplace, and took up the issue with Epic Customer Service, saying it was being "preemptive as a sign of good faith." It also urged fans to keep in mind that all AAA companies outsource their promotional work to other companies as well.Now, the indie developer studio has entirely removed the animations from its game. The move comes after receiving a somewhat bland response from Epic Customer Service saying that, as with any other store hosting third-party content, Epic is in no position to independently verify whether a Unreal Engine Marketplace seller has the appropriate rights to upload their content and that Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content.
And, although Epic did not verify whether the assets were stolen or not, the company did have them removed from its marketplace, which ultimately led to Archangel Studios' decision to have the controversial animations removed from its game altogether. While the removal of the animations from the newly released soulslike seemingly solves the problem, their removal by Epic from its marketplace could very well be perceived as a testament to the company's lack of faith in the assets' provenance.
While all the controversy surrounding Bleak Faith: Forsaken's animations has definitely been a setback for the game, its development team has reaffirmed its commitment to the project. In a post on the soulslike game's Discord channel, one of its developers, überfaith42, said the team would spend its time going forward working on alternatives.
The team behind Bleak Faith: Forsaken also expressed its dissatisfaction at the response from Epic Customer Service in a Twitter thread. In it, the indie developer states somewhat begrudgingly that seemingly assets cannot be purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace in good faith, and hope that all the controversy serves as a lesson to other indie video game developers just as it served them.
Bleak Faith: Forsaken is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.