MISERY, a cooperative survival shooter game developed by new developer Platypus Entertainment, is no longer available to purchase from the Steam store as of Friday, November 7th. The game, recently released on October 23rd, had a successful launch, and garnered positive reception from players on Steam. However, based on a community status update posted by the developers of MISERY, Valve alerted them that their game is being removed from the platform due to a DMCA strike by the developers of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, GSC Game World.
This is a particularly strange instance of alleged legal copyright action taken by GSC Game World, as generally, the studio has been very lenient on the plethora of games on Steam that take very obvious inspiration from S.T.A.L.K.E.R., such as Stalcraft, Zero Sievert, and Chernobylite. In that regard, MISERY is similar to the other S.T.A.L.K.E.R. derivative games on the platform, but GSC Game World allegedly takes issue with this smaller title. In MISERY’s community post, the developers allege that;
MISERY is a completely different concept… and it has nothing to do with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe…
In the screenshots of the DMCA notice provided in the post, GSC Game World alleges multiple examples of unauthorized usage of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. related content. To provide a visual example of this, the notice contains a comparison of images from the two games’ Steam Store pages, which illustrate similar scenes. MISERY contests this in their post, asserting:
MISERY was inspired by many things… We also want to remind GSC that their games draw heavily from Roadside Picnic and the Stalker movie by Tarkovsky, and they do not own the copyright on depressive Soviet-era buildings, playing guitar, vodka, radiation, or abandoned locations…
Aside from an opportunity for the game’s developers to defend themselves against this alleged “attack” and seemingly shed light on the removal of their game from Steam, it has also brought them negative attention from the community. There are whispers floating around on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Reddit about the primary Discord server for MISERY allegedly containing offensive content surrounding the Russo-Ukrainian war. However, officially, the developers plead the readers of their community post to:
…not insult them [GSC Game World] or other people in comments, especially for their nationality! We do not want or support that.
Beyond this possible controversy, the alleged similarities between the two games are certainly veritable, but the extent to which this likeness is detrimental for the future of MISERY hasn’t crystallized yet.