The Nintendo Switch eShop has a lot of issues. One of the worst is the apparent near-total lack of quality control in what gets approved by Nintendo for release. While reports indicated that Nintendo was being rather strict about who could or couldn’t publish at the start of the console’s life, it’s clear that things got a lot looser over the years. One by one, publishers of low-quality fare sold at bargain basement prices began to appear, leading to a glut of poorly-made games, template flips from the Unity Asset Store, and other such nonsense.
We’ve seen some games that skate the line of plagiarism on the eShop before. Pix Jungle Adventures from Kistler Studios, for example, clearly uses sprites ripped without permission from games created by Woblyware. We’ve also seen games that use names or marks that they don’t have a license for, with Pix Arts making at least a few games that step over this line. We’ve seen multiple instances of the same game template released under different names by multiple publishers such as the aforementioned Kistler Studios, Pix Arts, Piotr Skalski, and more. This is all pretty bad, contributing to the difficulty of discovery on the eShop without adding anything of value.
Left: The main character from Benjamin Kistler’s latest eShop release, Pix Jungle Adventures
Right: Abe Lincoln from @Woblyware ‘s 2012 hit mobile game, Random Heroes.
Hmmmm pic.twitter.com/Qa6gGEGonQ
— Shaun Musgrave (@ShaunMusgrave) June 11, 2021
Things marked a new low with the July 16th release of Cooking & Publishing’s Mini Subway: Logic on the Metro Line. Cooking & Publishing is relatively new to the Nintendo Switch ecosystem, but the publisher has been around for a while on mobile. On its website, the Spanish company claims to support indie game developers, offering a number of services such as porting, marketing, QA, and more. Looking at their eShop releases so far, you’d be hard-pressed to see even the smallest aspect of that supposed mission in action. Games like Puzzle Cube: Magic Urbik Game (a virtual Rubik’s Cube) and The Minesweeper: Crew Bomber Edition (which copies even the specific aesthetics of Microsoft’s Minesweeper) don’t exactly speak to any sort of commitment to quality.
Mini Subway: Logic on the Metro Line is Cooking & Publishing’s worst offender yet. It is nothing more than a naked rip-off of Dinosaur Polo Club’s Mini Metro, going so far as to copy its overall graphical style and UI. Putting screenshots of the two games beside each other, the two are almost indistinguishable. While Mini Metro‘s port was carefully tuned for the system, adding support for button controls among other things, Mini Subway: Logic on the Metro Line is only playable with touch controls, typically a sign of a mobile template being cobbled together for the Switch.
Which one is Mini Metro and which one is the shameful clone that shit merchants Cooking & Publishing was allowed to put up on the eShop yesterday? Imagine if a game copied one of Nintendo’s games this closely. pic.twitter.com/MJU4hxIZlO
— Shaun Musgrave (@ShaunMusgrave) July 15, 2022
Indeed, a little searching around has led me to a template being sold on the Unity Asset Store called Mini Subway – Mobile Game Template by a publisher named Lethargica. It’s highly likely that Cooking & Publishing purchased this template and compiled it for the Switch, a practice that in and of itself isn’t breaking any rules even if it generally results in a poor quality product. The issue here is that Mini Subway – Mobile Game Template, and Cooking & Publishing’s game based on it, appears to be close enough to Dinosaur Polo Club’s game to cross the line into plagiarism.
Readers of SwitchArcade will know that I was quite annoyed at seeing a naked clone of another developer’s game being released on the eShop, and I expressed my feelings quite clearly in my summary of Mini Subway, where I wrote:
“This is nothing more than a complete clone of Dinosaur Polo Club’s Mini Metro. Cooking & Publishing couldn’t even be bothered to change the aesthetic. But perhaps it couldn’t, because I suspect very much this is just a mobile template flip. It’s handheld only because touch controls are very much required. Frankly, I don’t understand why Nintendo is allowing this kind of thing. And I don’t know how the people at Cooking & Publishing are okay with this, either. Congratulations on stealing ideas wholesale from your betters, I guess? Is this why you got into making games? Is this living the dream? Please don’t support this trash. The real Mini Metro is available on Switch at a reasonable price and it’s a far more thoughtful conversion along with, you know, being the actual original. Disgusting. Shame on you, Cooking & Publishing."
The folks at Dinosaur Polo Club are apparently among my readership, because I received a response from them a few hours later. With their permission, I’ll print that reply here.
“As a small indie studio, we recognize that our own successes are, in part, due to standing on the shoulders of giants, and that part of the creative process involves taking inspiration from others and making it your own. Seeing people take inspiration from our games has been an amazing experience, but of course, there’s a difference between inspiration and plagiarism.
We owe it to our team to defend the work we’ve invested so much into, so we evaluate every report of copycat or clone versions of our games to assess whether they breach our trademark. While we always try to reach out to the developers first, if required, we will take legal action.
It’s a joy to see our games inspire others to make their own. We are nothing if not sympathetic to the hard work of fellow indie devs, but the work should be inspired by, not copied from."
My personal read on that is that Dinosaur Polo Club is significantly classier than I would probably be in the same situation, and that things don’t sound like they’re going to be too rosy for Mini Subway‘s future. I wouldn’t be surprised if the game is removed from the eShop at some point, in fact. As Dinosaur Polo Club says, there is a difference between inspiration and plagiarism, and I think anyone can see that Mini Subway is the latter.
But that brings us around to another part of the problem: Nintendo’s quality control on approvals. TouchArcade is at its roots an iOS gaming site, so this is hardly a novel situation to us. Apple (and Google) famously have very few qualms about letting all sorts of copyright violations, plagiarizing works, and so on slip through. Given the sheer volume of apps released every day, it’s perhaps understandable. But it’s not a good thing, and I’d argue it has reflected very poorly on the App Store. It’s not a path Nintendo should be following, particularly since the volume of new releases on the Switch is a fraction of what iOS deals with. This is a manageable amount of releases to do due diligence on. I know because I literally do just that with every release for the SwitchArcade new release round-ups.
If Mini Subway had copied a Nintendo game as closely as it copied Mini Metro, Nintendo’s Mighty Mjolnir itself would have descended from the heavens and obliterated it. Mini Metro is hardly an obscure game. Nintendo themselves featured its spiritual successor Mini Motorways in an Indie World Nintendo Direct presentation. If Nintendo isn’t willing to protect its partners in the indie development community that has supported the Nintendo Switch so vigorously, the eShop is going to end up just as much of a mess as the App Store, Google Play Store, and Steam. Arguably, it’s already not far from those.
I’m sure the right thing will be done here, and Mini Subway will be sent to the trash bin from whence it came. But this shouldn’t be happening in the first place, and I wish I could say I was confident that it won’t happen again. Heck, I wish I could say I was confident that the likes of Pix Arts and Kistler Studios don’t have their own flips on Mini Subway in the approval queue as I write this. But I can’t say either of those things, and that’s pretty sad. Absolutely nothing of value would be lost if Nintendo gave the boot to every last one of these template flippers, but I suspect they’ll be haunting the eShop for a long time to come. Where’s that old Seal of Quality when you need it, eh?
Where exactly is the line between plagiarism and own idea? Is changing
colour enough, modify shape? Is same wording pure ripoff?
What is game development anyway?
1. Is it business? Do whatever you want.
2. Is it live path? Express yourself and do whatever you want.
Judges are blind anyway...
Not sure what you’re trying to say. Plagiarism is pretty straightforward
I don't want to discuss it here, it's quite a topic!
My questions were more philosophical than anything else. Seriously, we can talk whole day just about shown art.
Anyway, article has it's purpose. For that it is too shallow. As well as Shaun's comments on twitter.
I am Shaun's fan, hate stealing and disrespect pure plagiarism.
These are definitely complicated issues: the first example is pretty straightforward copyright infringement, but both Metro games borrow existing transit iconography (especially Henry Beck’s London Underground map), so the copying here is more a matter of gameplay — which is fairly unprotected by copyright. No question that there are bad actors both in the eshop and the AppStore. For a while there, it seemed like I was emailing Marek at MadFinger games once a week to let him know of a fresh Samurai II clone.
You can’t overstate the difference in responsibility between the Nintendo and Apple/Google. The AppStore added 300,000 games last year (a light one); the eShop has a total of 5,000 games. In other words, last year Apple reviewed and approved 5 times as many apps as there are in the whole eShop — every month. The task of catching clones is way, way smaller for Nintendo.
Mini Metro's visuals are clearly inspired by and very consciously alluding to Beck's iconic and by-now universal work, yes, but the mimicking doesn't stop at copying Metro's particular adaptation of Beck's work. The soft-white backdrop; the different shapes of the hubs denoting different types of stops (ooh, they added a *heart*; they must have had to lie down for the day after that); the HUD design, with the passenger count with the little road-sign man and the pause/play/double-speed options and the clock with the hand sweeping to indicate the passage of time and turning white/black to symbolize day/night in the upper-right; the shape of the rail cars and use of dots to denote passengers (with each car seating 6); the use of solid-color circles to switch between your lines (ooh, they moved it to the *side*; here comes another holiday). I mean, come on. Use your eyes. My name's BOTHSIDESBOTHSIDES and it's undeniable even to me. There is as of this writing no video of Mini Subway on YouTube or the game's Nintendo product page, but I don't have my hopes up for Mini Subway sounding or moving different, either; I'd bet the sound effects are similar and there's a similar ambient soundtrack and a slow, almost-inperceptible pan out as your metro expands.
Yes, *very obviously*, Mini Metro was inspired by a universally-known work, but the dev expanded on that aesthetic in unique ways using the gaming medium to create a distinctive work. Please name one unique thing about Mini Subway. (The heart doesn't count.) You can't say, "oh, Mini Metro was clearly alluding to this well-known piece of art, so copyright can't exist for this game uwu."
Haven’t played the Switch game and don’t intend to, so I’ll take your word for it. Generally speaking, authors of derivative works have a tough time making claims against other derivative works based on the same properties. We’re not talking morals or ethics here, but what’s actionable in a court of law. Copyright isn’t a switch that goes off and on — there’s a lot of precedent and nuance, and like anything else in the legal system (unfortunately), it can all depend on how much you can pay on lawyers.
I should note that I’m not a lawyer, but I work in a field that deals with copyright and trademark law pretty regularly.
You "work in a field that deals with copyright and trademark law pretty regularly," and you've heard of derivative but not transformative use? Which would apply to taking the style of a extraordinarily-popular, near-universally-recognized ninety-year-old work meant to aid in urban navigation and adapting it for use in a puzzle video game, by the way. Evidently, the party whose opinion matters most on this issue—Transport for London, which holds the copyright for Beck's map and is actively enforcing it—agrees, as we haven't heard of Mini Metro getting any C&Ds.
(If you're looking for an illustration of "derviative," then hey! What about a game that precisely rips off the visuals, HUD, and gameplay of another game with a near-identical title sold in the same marketplace? The one you're defending as a blazingly-original work?)
Look, I understand you don't care. But just say you don't care. Don't concoct a cover story about "oh, actually, I work in law" and then prove yourself ignorant of the most basic terminology. You very obviously don't work in law, and you're not convincing anyone who's not on your side already that you do.
nintendo is not responsible for copyright stuff that isn't theirs to begin with.
I’m afraid they *are*, legally speaking. They operate the eShop, and stores are indeed liable for selling goods that are in violation of copyright. If you don’t believe me, open up a shop selling bootleg Disney goods and let me know how it goes for you.
Shaun, did a copy right attroney tell you that? Because I'm pretty sure DMCA legislation protects platform holders from being sued for hosting copy righted material. You can ask for it to be taken off the store or site, but you have to sue the creator of said material. Plenty of times there's been games on the Play store or Appstore that were using Mario or Pokémon assets and I don't Nintendo sued Google or Apple over that.
DMCA protects platform holders who are *hosting* copyright material. It does not protect vendors who are *selling* it. Please check your receipt for any eShop purchase and tell me who the vendor is.
The reason none of the big boys gets sued (and Nintendo won’t either) is because it’s a good idea to have your lawyers reach out first and see if they’ll remove the item before you jump into a costly legal battle with a massive corporation. And naturally those companies take them down when contacted because they generally don’t want to have a legal battle either, and also tend to act in good faith because they are professional and there’s generally no upside to standing ground on this kind of clear-cut case.
It all depends on Nintendo’s contract. It was my understanding that every game on the Switch was technically co-published by Nintendo (which is why they can show the Switch logo and animation on the trailers). If that’s correct, then Nintendo would have no DCMA protection, since the act protects platforms, not publishers. By the same token, Apple would have no DCMA protection on any Apple Arcade game — which is why they do a ton of due diligence on those.
okay, but nintendo didn't make those game and i guess they didn't check thoroughly enough - my guess nintendo didn't hire someone to check if see if this game xxx is a straight up clone of this xxx game and etc.
As someone who platinumed Mini Metro, thanks for writing this, and I'm sorry it seems to be attracting responses solely from those intent on ignoring the problem.
Noone's ignoring the problem here.
Sorry, but neither You nor Shaun evidently knows enough to talk about this topic. There is simply too many nuances. We can all agree, that what is shown in the article is not morally right.
First example is laughtable. One character (copied style, own design) and control ui in a completelly different game are the same? Do you understand, how pixelart developed? How art and games are seen by law? In different coutries? Is it problem of the publisher who paid student to make copy? Isn't using free assets? Is it weak artist's fault judging by rest of the games art? Dunno, it isn't clear. Not from the article or your posts.
Second example is more clear, but again. What exactly is in the unity asset? Does publisher purchased it and paid developer to do the clone for his portfolio? Is it developer, who tried to parasite on the known frenchise?
Legal afair is simple. Nintendo is responsible for selling illegal game. If developer/publisher submits product to vendor, he claims his ownership and rights for the product and IS responsible for the content itself. In case of the publisher, subject has transfered rights to do things, specified in a contract. Often abused by publisher and mistaken by indie dev as fair set of rules agreed by both sides (personal experience). It is strictly guided by national law of each country.
Shop owner (Nintendo,Apple,Google) is morally responsible. Legally if content brakes law. Contact shop owner and talk him, he will pull it down (Hard way, but only way. Also personal experience with Apple.).
Nintendo is rather sending their ninjas to protect own propriety, then use resources to QA. Meanwhile. Shop is so sluggish, it is not worthy to spend much time with it. Buy big game and leave. What do you suggest? Maybe we can go back in time and let Nintendo (some office guys currently in charge with poor taste) to decide what is good for you? Pre 3ds time, where it was equal to impossible for small indie dev to publish on their platform?
Apple made App Store and was selling simple games (by the time, other platforms delivered even 3d games). Simplicity of development (long story), causal gamers (also long story) and Apple formed new branch in game industry. Last few years, Apple is trying to figure things out (Appstore stories, Apple arcade, region barriers etc.).
Gamers (judges) don't care. Deal with it. There are even worse things in the world.
Or describe topic properly and indepth. Eventually take the action.
In memory of law abuse and copyright infringement (Luftrausers, Tiny Tower and many more). :)
Michal Hochmajer
btw. Even my point of view is fairly limited in understanding this topic, that is why we talk in the chat (discuss, learn, gather info, if you are interested).