Unomelon, the developer of Minecraft-inspired sandbox game Allumeria, says a DMCA from Microsoft, evidently related to Minecraft, got the game removed from Steam.
“The Allumeria Steam page is currently down because Microsoft has filed a false DMCA claim on it,” Unomelon said on Bluesky on Tuesday. “They sent an email earlier today claiming that this screenshot infringes on their copyright. I am taking a moment to figure out what my path is going forward, will update soon.”
The screenshot in question (above) is a simple wide shot of a forest filled with birch trees, what look to be oak trees with green and autumnal leaves, and a few pumpkins and weeds checkering the grassy dirt. There are definitely some similarities to Minecraft; if you told me this was a screenshot of a Minecraft mod, I’d probably believe you, but that’s true of many voxel-based games, including Hytale.
Minecraft copyright doesn’t cover the entire genre of block-based sandbox pixel art games. Minecraft isn’t even the first in that genre, even if it’s the most popular by a wide margin.
Unless Microsoft can prove that one of the textures started by copying a Minecraft texture, or that substantial bits of code are copied from Minecraft, there is no claim.
Indeed
And theres only so many ways to make a low pixel square look when you wanna make it look like a birch tree
Hytales birch trees are just more gray, and dont have white/black contrast
Same leaf color though