I have been working for over 2 years on my game and 4 months ago I finally released my demo. Yesterday, while searching on Steam I found a game with EXACTLY the same title and very similar premise. The page was created in May or June 2026 and they aim to release in August 2026. Here are some of descriptions I use on my Steam page:
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A first-person psychological thriller with a heavy atmosphere and elements of liminal horror.
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Uncover the stories of your subjects by studying their personal items and darkest secrets before making life-or-death choices.
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Will you sacrifice your own beliefs to obey HIS authority?
For comparison here is how they describe their game:
“Will you obey orders, or resist? In this first-person psychological horror game, you sit across from subjects and must investigate evidence to determine who is telling the truth, and decide their fate.”
My game is planned to release in October or whenever it’s completely playtested and polished. I’m not sure what I can do as this has never happened before, what do you think is my best course of action here?
For reference my game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2719670/The_Milgram_Experiment
And the copy: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4777470/The_Milgram_Experiment/
You named your game after a well known psychological experiment and now you’re surprised someone else used the name and generalized gameplay related to said experiment? Not trying to be that guy but brother, what were you expecting? Did you have another in the tank called The Stanford Prison Experiment? The Rorschach Test maybe? Kinda comes with the territory I would think.
But for real, just call it Milgram. Conveys the same thing, no crossover with duplicate, I think it would show up first in a search on steam as well.
I guess I am upset that they didn’t check if the name is taken or not. When I create a new project (this is my 4th game) I always check for same name. Because even if it’s technically legal it’s not beneficial for both sides to have one game mistaken for the other
They may have done you a favour. The name just being the name of a famous experiment is not very SEO friendly. The less of your troubles is another game having the same name, you have thousands of references to that experiment to compete with for name placement.
I’m certainly sorry for your troubles but I’m not really seeing anything here compelling as to the idea of them purposely stealing something from you. It’s two games based on an actual scientific experiment. So of course the name is going to be the same cuz the name is based on the experiment. Of course the descriptions going to be similar because you’re describing the same experiment. The games themselves seem different enough that I have trouble believing you could convince anyone of theft here, particularly anyone at Steam.
There are a lot of games out there that are very similar. It’s just the nature of the thing. I agree with some other comments in here I think your best choice is to just change the name, maybe to something a little bit more memorable and original and rely on the fact that your product does look better. Certainly file an official Complaint if you feel it necessary, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
Thanks for your opinion and honesty!
Not a dev or lawyer, zero experience. But don’t undervalue word-of-mouth! That’s something they can never copy. Sure, some people might buy the asset flips/copies, but hopefully they’ll get refunds. But if your game is popular and liked and well-reviewed, and supported, it’ll drown out the noise and rise above it all… Good luck!
Thank you so much!
are you not able to claim copyright by contacting steam?
I am not sure, waiting for their response
It’s been adjudicated before: you can’t. It’s the reason PUBG and Fortnite can coexist even though Epic completely ripped off PUBG after helping develop the game. It’s also why the “DOOM clone” genre was allowed to proliferate into the FPS genre, why there are so many FNAF-inspired games, and why Nintendo recently lost one of its Pokémon patents. You don’t own the concept of the Milgram experiment, you don’t own the trademark for the name, and the overall gameplay concept is not subject to copyright. Unless you can prove that the other developer stole code or art assets from you, or that it violated a trademark or patent that you own, there’s nothing you can do but hope that the better product wins in the end.
how is fortnite a rip off of pubg? That was one of the dumbest lawsuits ever I cant believe people actually repeat that bs.
During development, PUBG’s developers worked closely with Epic for technical support of the Unreal Engine. At the time, Epic was developing a multiplayer sandbox game that focused on building fortifications and area defense. It was a little-known title called Fortnite.
PUBG launched into early access in March of 2017 and was an immediate massive success. Only half a year later, Epic launched Fortnite Battle Royale, which was a massive departure from the original Fortnite concept. It had the same genre as PUBG, it had the same game rules, the gameplay was nearly identical; and it retained barely anything from the original core gameplay loop of fortification-building. You’d have to be willfully ignorant on the level of flat earthers to think it’s all just an innocent coincidence.
I don’t think Epic directly stole any of PUBG’s works, but I am absolutely certain beyond doubt that they took “inspiration” from PUBG the same way Richard Wagner took inspiration from Germanic mythology when writing his opera. Whatever abhorrent eldritch abomination Fortnite may be today, it started its life as a complete rip-off.
What was unique about the PUBG / Unreal Engine situation is that Epic had only used the Unreal Engine for things like Unreal Tournament. They have a large set of customers who license their engine. When PUBG, which was originally created as an Arma mod (like DayZ), was moved to a standalone company by PlayerUnknown, they began looking for engines to rapidly rebuild what made Arma special. The bullet physics, look of the engine, environment and so on. They chose the Unreal engine.
PUBG took off as soon as the demo was released. There was an ongoing business relationship where PUBG developers worked with the Unreal engine developers to add features to the developer tools, and changes to the engine, to support features that PUBG needed. These changes of course were merged back into the main Unreal engine branch, and this allowed Epic to take the work for a battle royale game from the business association with PUBG, and rapidly cash in on the battle royale craze with Fortnite. It probably only took them 14 days to create it with all the work that PUBG had funded with modfying the engine too.
That’s what is different about this, versus just a company creating a clone. It was a dangerous thing to do from Epic’s point of view too because I’m sure there could be cases where other customers could see the engine company help them create an initial product, and then use that work to rip them off with a clone.
From a business practice standpoint, this is similar to what Amazon did with Amazon Basics. Where Amazon became the main, or only, online marketplace for many products. They ran reports and data to find which third party products were selling well on their site… And then they set up stuff like Amazon Basics to essentially copy them. Eventually due to the price and shipping advantage, and the Amazon name, the original products get replaced. And it feeds into Amazons profits.
Now with AI, all someone has to do is find out which games are popular and then drop some money on tokens to try to vibe code a competing game.
PUBG wasn’t the first battle royale. There were a few before it. In that era every studio was making one.
It was the first battle royale that anyone actually gave a shit about.
Pubg wasnt the first or only battle royal game. There were others that were blowing up before and during. Fortnite season 1 wasnt at all a rip off. They implemented a simple game type popular in several games at the time. Pubg got greedy and thought they owned the entire genre because they were blowing up. Theres no evidence that fortnite battle royal was released due to snooping by epic staff.
Name a battle royale game that released before PUBG
I believe the Minecraft Hunger Games mod was where it all started.
I’m curious how they’d respond to this… as far as I know, there were a handful of mods for other games that kinda did the concept but no actual games, certainly not the way any games do BR after PUBG’s release. H1Z1? But not really, as PUBG’s creator did a lot of that…
the closest things would probably be last-man-standing shooters but those aren’t BR games.
H1Z1 is probably the technical first but I seem to recall that BR mode didn’t take off because the game had too much jank to be fun.
Minecraft hunger games, h1z1, the culling. Just going through a few shooters and search hunger games or battle royal brings up game modes from way before pubg for quite a few games, arma, half life, runescape. Hell theres even a movie with the same concept.
Then you look at pubg and you see how many battle royal games released in the same few months and you think they copied pubg? Thats impossible. You cannot copy a game in a few months. Its more likely they were all looking at h1z1 which was very popular and topping twitch with all the major streamers playing it. Then most of the following games put some kind of spin on the formula and made it something completely different.
Minecraft hunger games, h1z1, the culling.
These were all created after the original PUBG, which was an Arma mod created similar to DayZ. This existed as what we know of battle royale before any other clone, and it was also created by PlayerUnknown.
Not true Minecraft was earlier by a few years and blew up a few years before the arma mod. But reading more of the lore it does seem like Brendan greene was involved in battle realistic style royals since very early days and was heavily involved I’m all the major genre hits. But that still doesnt make fortnite a copy.
Reading through the lore player Brendan Greene worked on h1z1 but ultimately the company that decided to make pubg say that they saw how popular h1z1 was and decided to reach out to Brendan Greene to work on the game that became pubg.
Third person view battle royale. Having only ever seen videos of Fortnite the difference is primarily art style.
Damn didnt realise a viewing angle and type is all you needed. Someone tell all 2d platformers that they’re clones.
I mean Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld for awhile was “throwing a spherical object” to catch things. Game IP law can get stupid.
Yeah and what was the correct response to Nintendo
This is what it sounds like when people defend the Steam monopoly btw.
It’s the same game…
Because Epic bad
That’s about as much thought these G*mers have.
Jesus Christ, now I have to make a new account to double downvote you; one for the shitty take, and one for unnecessary single-letter censorship.
I had no idea two steam apps could have the same name. It does make sense though, you pay for an app for every prototype and not all prototypes make it to development. There would be a lot of wasted names. I wonder that if you apply for an IARC rating first, it will block them. Dm me if you want to know the no cost, zero effort way to do it.
Shit, I forgot part of it costs money.
Happened to bigger outfits. There is this board game “Settlers of Catan”, which should have been “Settlers” originally, until a computer game of that name got released just before they launched.
I never knew that. It was such a mainstay with fen and I have played it so much.
You’ll need to add onto your tile, to distinguish it from the rip-off version, so people know.
And, doing what you’re doing here, getting the word out.
You’ll be fine.
Thank you
You didn’t come up with the name and it’s perfectly realistic to imagine more than 1 person coming up with a similar idea based on the same concept. Even if someone “stole” your idea - do it better than them and you’ll have nothing to worry about. I’d be more understanding of your concern if a big AAA studio happened to make this release so close to yours, but even then not much you can do due to aforementioned reasons. And while Steam lets you use any name you want, even if it’s already taken, it will put your game first on the search list if more people interact with it, which will naturally happen if your game is good.
Yours looks way better, one small criticism that may be easy to adjust but could also just be the visual style you want: most surfaces look way too glossy and reflective.
While it’s nice to have detailed reflections, things like the wall tiles just seem nearly like mirrors when it comes to light reflections. There’s no diffusion. Maybe the face masks could stay as glossy, but I would diffuse/dull the rest a bit. The ceramic tile but especially the padded room. Padded room tiles would be fabric so there really shouldn’t be any gloss and very little reflection.
I hope you don’t take that the wrong way, and I think your game will stand out as far superior to the copy
I guess it’s too late to change the name of the game, but when you think about it, the “clone” is a shitty game that won’t get a lot of downloads if any. I’m only a gamer, but your whole Steam page is way more enticing.
You could create a small website with links to the Steam page (and Bluesky and Twitter…) as a reference. The other guy won’t waste more time on his project. I saw your Posts history on Lemmy, and you have a lot of upvotes and conversations about that game, it’s something that the clone guy cannot reproduce easily, he would be roasted very fast if he tried that.
Thank you for the kind words! Do you mean too late for me to change the name?
Yes, too late to change the name, but it’s a stupid idea, you have way more momentum and hype than the other guy. Don’t bother about him.
More like problem is that if it will gain popularity people will mistake titles when purchasing.
Unless you trademark the title you can’t do anything about it. And an international trademark cost a lot of money.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The copy doesn’t look like a game that can compete. It looks very barebones. The Steam algorithm will bury this game because it won’t sell. You probably gave this game more publicity than it ever got before. Just focus on your own game the more wishlists you get the more the algorithm will push your game to customers and they will never see the copy.
Thank you! Yeah I’m not sure my name can be trademarked, but just not worth the money spent. However I assumed Steam had a system that prevented using the exact same title
Unfortunately not. Just look up “SCP Containment Breach” or even just “SCP” on Steam and you’ll see a whole mess of duplicates.
I wish listed your game, I’ve been following it for some time, looks a lot better than the copy. I don’t think that copy will sell as much, and if you keep promoting and talking about it the way you already are, I think it’d be clear which one is the rip off.
I think it’d be a good idea to give keys to some streamers to show the game. I might tell a few steamers to stream this, it seems like it would be fun to do this with an audience.
Yeah, thank you! I am already sending my demo to streamers and of course when the full game is out I will send keys too
I have played the demo for your game, and while I don’t know if you can fight this, you’ll deffo be getting at least one sale!
