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.
Wait until they figure out hytale released a similar looking game
Definitely looks far too much like minecraft to seem interesting at all, regardless of legal concerns. We don’t need more minecraft.
Microsoft, evidently related to Minecraft
Bruh, they’ve owned it for like a decade at this point. Even if someone was wholly unaware of Minecraft, it would be one of the first things to come up on a cursory search of the game.
The DMCA claim was evidently related to the Minecraft IP. It’s not suggesting that Minecraft is unrelated to Microsoft.
Sniff It smells like birch up in here.
That’s not just similar to Minecraft - it’s nearly identical. I’m not sure that the DMCA notice isn’t justified. I don’t know the law well enough to judge where the line between legal and illegal Minecraft clones is.
Minecraft is an infiniminer clone, it should be shut down ASAP.
Because it’s a voxel Birch or because you feel the texture is derivative and pixel similarities show glaring similarities leading to the belief the creation of the assets were based on MC textures?
A DCMA from a company representing Mojang got Luanti (formerly Minetest) taken down once before because they thought it infringed. After challenge it was later found it was bullshit.
It’s not just the tree - it’s the whole scene. (Complete with random pumpkins that you wouldn’t ever include unless you were deliberately copying Minecraft.) As I’ve said, I don’t know if that’s illegal but it’s certainly derivative enough that I have no sympathy for it.
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
Curious what your thoughts are on Vintage Story, Hytale, Castleminer Z, etc…
There is nothing literally taken from minecraft. All the textures are original, and not even that similar to minecraft. I’ve talked with people like you before who just has no fucking clue about something that is so obvious to just about everyone else when it comes to stuff like this. It’s very clearly NOT minecraft, nothing in anything shown in the images or anywhere else from the game gives any hint at stolen models, textures etc. There are tons of block games like this and many that look way more similar but those have never gotten a DMCA.
It looks like Minecraft bro turn off your reality distortion field
Did you even look into it or did you just do what the AI generating the DMCA did and looked at a singular image and decided it looks like Minecraft?
It does look like minecraft with a texture pack and shaders. Though, the trees look skinnier than normal.
Hytale looks like Minecraft with a texture pack and shaders. Every Minecraft inspired block based game looks like Minecraft with a texture pack and shader.
Oh and MS just withdrew their copyright claim because it was bullshit from the start.
The style is similar to Minecraft, the rest just happens in nature. I took a walk in my woods last fall and saw oak and birch and even… pumpkins
Minecraft has red leaves?
If the DMCA is not sent by Microsoft, it doesn’t matter. You can’t file one on behalf of someone else.
Lol. Birch trees are the most despised tree by most Minecraft players.
What’s wrong with birch trees?
The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.
Why?
The stripped log and the wood are fine, but the regular birch log is almost impossible to use in builds. It just looks bad in almost any context.
I am old enough to be hyped when birch trees were added. I love birch trees because that hold a core memory for me.
Huh. I just looked it up and apparently birch was added just about a year before I started playing. Crazy how we assume everything that was in there when we started has “been there forever.”
Jungle wood hater here. No reason to use it. Just leave the jungles alone!
Burn them to the ground to expose the hyper-green grass blocks below! (/s… maybe)
Who needs Minecraft? Play Voxelibre instead!
