The surplus amount of indie and/or shovelware titles appearing on official storefronts has been in the uprising for the last decade. As more and more resources are easily available for people interested in the video game industry, it's no surprise that this has been the case.

While many have realized their dream game into a reality with the current tools at their disposal, others take inspiration from already existing titles to bring forth a new story with original characters. However, you can only take so much "inspiration" from a game before it borders into plagiarism, and this has been the one case for a title found in the Nintendo eShop, "The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival".

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The title found its way into the Nintendo eShop just like month, on June 30th, and many people took interested in the title due to some interesting resemblances to another published title by Sony. The promotional image for "The Last Hope" sees the main protagonist in company of a woman who highly resembles Ellie from "The Last of Us", down to the very same hair style, clothing and face, albeit with a lower quality than that seen in The Last of Us.

Outside of the resemblance with Ellie, the game has very little substance to even make it into the mediocrity level. The story boils down to a time travel concept of sending a soldier's conscience to the future to help with a zombie outbreak, but aside from the flat story, there's no voice acting; instead carrying over all plot/story points and dialogues through hefty text boxes and still images (which may or may not be AI generated), dull environments and awful models that make the game look like an early PS2 title in terms of visual quality due to the lack of proper lighting, almost no music at all, simplistic UIs and the gameplay itself leaves a lot to be desired.

After the game made its ways in social media, it quickly caught up and gathered attention, enough to make the rounds of Sony, to which the resemblance of Ellie with the character of "Eva/Eve" in "The Last Hope" was enough for them to take action and issue a copyright claim to it. The game's trailer has been taken down with the message "Video unavailable. This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC" (which has been reuploaded by other users given the original has been claimed).

Not only was the game's trailer pulled by Sony, but it seems like Nintendo has also removed the game from their own eShop, as well as all other instances or mentions of the game from their websites, with the original link for "The Last Hope" now redirecting to a 404 page. Most interestingly, prompting the link into the Wayback Machine gives out the message "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine."

Source

 

[Dust2dust]

Some QC guy working at the Nintendo eShop needs to be fired over this.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Some QC guy working at the Nintendo eShop needs to be fired over this.

Just this?



That seal of "quality" means nothing now, and neither did it back in the day.

 

[KingVamp]

Yeah, they need to do some shop cleaning, especially if it is going to be the same exact shop for their next console.

I doubt Sony can keep people from using "The Last" in their game titles, but it was so clear what they were tying to do. The company and the people in it, should be blacklisted.

That said, a time traveling zombie story, doesn't seem like a bad plot.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Hold up. The wayback machine was censored??

 

[raxadian]

Some QC guy working at the Nintendo eShop needs to be fired over this.

Nintendo has not checked the quality of games since the Nintendo Wii.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Nintendo has not checked the quality of games since the Nintendo Wii.

Wii??

 

[newo]

Makes me wonder if Nintendo would give me a license. I'd throw NewoZero up there and see how much it sells.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Hold up. The wayback machine was censored??

So it seems.
It baffled me to find out that in this instance they refused to keep a back up of the webpage.

Kinda defeats the whole purpose of archiving everything for historical purposes, whatever they may be.

 

[Nincompoopdo]

Nintendo used to curate their games - they don't allow crap games on their platform, it's their policy. Now they are no better than Atari in the early 80s - selling crapware.

 

[ZeroFX]

I heard this game is as good as the last of us part II, almost a 1:1 copy, Sony made the right move.

 

[17hitcombooo]

Some QC guy working at the Nintendo eShop needs to be fired over this.

i have to remind myself everytime this seal exist for one terrible game on the eshop

 

[PopcornSweetie]

I heard this game is as good as the last of us part II, almost a 1:1 copy, Sony made the right move.

I smelled, sniffed, smoked, choked, licked, heared and stomped sarcasm all over the place and i am all in for it.

 

[Marc_LFD]

i have to remind myself everytime this seal exist for one terrible game on the eshop

Just one?

 

[MetoMeto]

This was unnecessary even if it was plagiarism. Some indie developers start like this.
Big corporations are a cancer of small people.

Post automatically merged: Aug 2, 2023

And nothing of value was lost.

Than why copyright claim...

 

[MariArch]

Nooooo my beloved…. ;(

 

[Marc_LFD]

Some indie developers start like this.

This developer shows that he/she or they are very incompetent because the games look horrible, it's copy and paste jobs, and the games use the same tactics as Android/iOS games have (include keywords as part of the title).

There is no defending this.

P.S. Digital Foundry's video shows the game uses the Euro sockets, but it has the American flag. Did the building owners go out of their way to use a 220v sockets in a country that uses 110v? Haha, no. It's just the devs being lazy with details.

 

[MetoMeto]

This developer shows that he/she or they are very incompetent because the games look horrible, it's copy and paste jobs, and the games use the same tactics as Android/iOS games have (include keywords as part of the title).

There is no defending this.

P.S. Digital Foundry's video shows the game uses the Euro sockets, but it has the American flag. Did the building owners go out of their way to use a 220v sockets in a country that uses 110v? Haha, no. It's just the devs being lazy with details.

Still no reason for Sony to get involved over nothing.
Its not defending its just stupid, and as i said, everyone has to start somehow.
You might not like it, but it hurts no one and helps them.

 

[Hassal]

Oh boy you think this is bad wait until AI reaches the level of sophistication where you can tell it to make you knockoffs of games from the ground up.

 

[MetoMeto]

Oh boy you think this is bad wait until AI reaches the level of sophistication where you can tell it to make you knockoffs of games from the ground up.

AI can fuck off and people that created it. And VR as well... i hate both craps.

 

[TomSwitch]

Saying that this game infringe on "The Last of Us" is a stretch. Anything that has "The Last" and a girl with a pony tail standing with a man is going to make you think of that game but seriously no body is going to think that this game has something to do with Sony. If this is wrong then anything with a boy holding a sword and dressed in green is going to be wrong too. How about a man dressed in red standing next to a taller man dressed in green? An ape holding a barrel?