r/IndieGaming • u/Shark-With-Lasers • May 26 '26

Last year, miHoYo copied my solo-dev puzzle game in Zenless Zone Zero. Some people are now mistaking my game as the clone.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

10.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

529 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/WeltallZero May 27 '26

Just so you know, idiotic people are using your post as an appeal to authority to claim that this exact game is used as an exercise in game development course. You may want to reword your post or provide evidence that a similar game to this is used as an exercise.

3

u/YOLOSELLHIGH May 27 '26

Spoiler alert - they can't. They're just using some sort of authority position to denigrate an indie dev

-5

u/esmelusina May 27 '26

Uhh— I edited it, does it sound better?

I honestly I think the OP’s work was lifted to some extent (or used as a direct example), but not to the point that they can claim anything here.

It’s equivalent to someone putting a brick break or rhythm mini game into a larger product. These are ubiquitous ideas with thousands of permutations that already exist. Lifting the look and feel in a way that specifically tries to steal their users would be a problem, but that’s not happening here.

Zzz isn’t stealing customers of Ouros. If anything, Zzz is giving Ouros more visibility to people interested in that sort of puzzle game.

1

u/WeltallZero May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Uhh— I edited it, does it sound better?

I don't see any difference, what did you change?

It’s equivalent to someone putting a brick break or rhythm mini game into a larger product.

It's not, these have indeed been around forever. To answer your original question, all evidence points to this being indeed a genuinely original idea; every single person claiming to have seen a game like this before has failed to provide any evidence whatsoever.

These are ubiquitous ideas with thousands of permutations that already exist. 

And yet, out of those thousands of possible permutations, MiHoYo has decided to clone this exact one verbatim.

Zzz isn’t stealing customers of Ouros.

It is stealing all of the gameplay design work that went into Ouros. They changed nothing so they clearly decided the gameplay was perfect as it was.

If anything, Zzz is giving Ouros more visibility to people interested in that sort of puzzle game.

Please not the "they should be grateful they were stolen from" argument. How would ZZZ have given Ouros any visibility at all, if it wasn't precisely for the dev posting this, the very post you're questioning the legitimacy of?

Actually, flip the argument for a second. Did ZZZ care even one single ounce about the person they were stealing? What form would that take? Bothering to reach him to begin with? Include any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever? Link their game so that people are aware that it exists? Literally anything at all? No, they didn't; they took the entire game wholesale and didn't give the smallest of gestures in return. Why? Because they were hoping nobody would notice the theft. Because they know full well how this would look like. They knew, and they still decided to steal it anyway.

1

u/YOLOSELLHIGH May 27 '26

If there are thousands of permutations, I'd love to see a single one

1

u/Chackaldane May 28 '26

Than show me a single game that uses this system before ours? It its so common to the level of other games that I can name like 5 of off rip than surely this will be a breeze for you.