Recently I bought the game Thymnesia. I knew it was called souls like and I have no problem with the mechanics.
But the animation for activating the safe points was do Bloodborne like. Also you had a safe zone, like the Hunters Workshop, with a little girl by your side resembling the doll.
Another example would be the game Wolcen Lords of Mayhem. There you got treasure insects instead of treasure goblins.
I am curious because I recently read that Monster was suing companies for using the word „monster“ in games or titles.
Why is it so different when copying game mechanics?
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Intellectual property and the laws surrounding it are very complicated, but to over-generalize –
The more specific and recognizable an element is, the more likely it is to fall under copyright. Things like the specific names of characters, places, and so on are under copyright. Actual graphical and sound assets and code fall under copyright (unless they were released under license). Vaguely defined plot or game-play elements do not.
“Fair use” is an exception to this, and protects parody or commentary. You can’t put “Firelink Shrine” in your video game and call it “firelink shrine,” and get away with it, unless you are making specific critique of firelink shrine, and only use as much of it as you need to use to make that critique.
“Trademark” is also a separate concept from copyright, which makes it even more complicated. A registered trademark is a name or logo for a product that can’t be used by a competing company. You can’t sell a drink and name it “Monster” even if it is a very different drink from the real monster energy drink, because consumers could plausibly get confused about which is the real one. You can, however, call something that is not a drink “monster” and probably it is fine.
But at the end of the day, whether or not a company can win a lawsuit about any of this is not about the law, it is about whether they can win the case. Is there a precedent for people suing over this and winning? Can they convince a jury that their business was damaged because of the conduct of the other company, or not? Can they threaten to bring a suit that they know they would probably lose, but would be too costly for the other party to contest? These are, at the end of the day, the more relevant questions.
A video game that was 1:1 a direct mechanical clone of another *might* have a good theoretical case for copyright infringement. You could argue that the game was effectively stolen. But – can you convince a jury of twelve random people who haven’t played the game that it is? Moreover, since certain gameplay tropes are so universal and copied by so many different games anyway, would they care that game A copied some mechanics from game B?
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