Vlambeer embroiled in new game cloning storm

Ridiculous Fishing developer Vlambeer has found itself at the centre of a new game cloning storm after it claimed upcoming title Luftrausers has been copied by another developer.

In a statement to Eurogamer, developer Rami Ismail said news the game had been cloned gave the team a scare, and that Rubiq Labs-developed title SkyFar had copied the game idea and visual style of Luftrausers.

He said he fully intended to fight against Sky Far’s release, and had gotten in touch with Apple and Google in an effort to resolve the situation, “without getting involved in yet another clone war”.

Luftrausers is currently being developed for PC, Mac, Linux, PS3 and Vita, while SkyFar is set to hit iOS.

Despite accusations of cloning, Rubiq Labs told Vlambeer that it had generated all of the assets and written the code itself, and that the screenshots did not necessarily indicate real gameplay.

"We simply can’t deal with the stress of another cloned game, so we’ve gotten in touch with Apple and Google to see if there is a way for the issue to be resolved without us getting involved in yet another clone war,” said Ismail.

“We’re more than happy to see games inspired by our works and we encourage anyone to practice game design and development by recreating personal favourites – but the clones of both Ridiculous Fishing and Luftrausers take ‘inspiration’ a step too far and into the marketplace. We’re extremely exhausted from dealing with cloning and even though this is an important issue to stand up against, we had hoped that we could just release a game without the cloning debate happening for once.

"Ultimately, we refuse to accept this as a part of our industry. We believe that showing our games to our fans early is a better way of developing Vlambeer games than keeping secrets and just dropping the final result on people when it’s done.”

Vlambeer has had previous experience with game cloning scandals, with titles such as Ridiculous Fishing and Radical Fishing believed to have been cloned in the past.