When Abhi Swaminathan opened a mobile cooking game called Sofra, his first reaction was to have fun.
He thought he looked extremely similar to his own narrative cooking game, Venba, with some critical changes.
“The assets I saw in the game were quite one by one. They were raised, and in my eyes, they were disinfected a bit,” he said.
Swaminathan, founder and director of Visai Games, based in Toronto, took Venba in 2023.
In his game, players assume the role of an Indian mother who immigrates Canada in the 1980s. Her recipe book is damaged, already measure that players recreate Tamile meals, learn about the family in the center of the game.
“History is about love, family and loss,” Swaminathan said.
Sofra, meanwhile, is a kitchen simulation game that came out this year that eliminates any narrative element, instead of preparing dishes such as peanut butter and sandwiches or gelatin pancakes.
At the end of June, Visai games fired a publication on social networks accusing Sofra of being a “scam” that removed songs such as “dealing with racism”, which leads to comments from frustrated fans of Venba and publications in video game blogs that indicate the similar aesthetics of the two games.
Swaminathan finally decided not to take any legal action, citing the frequency with which other creators take videogame elements and the challenge of chasing Sofra’s responsible companies, which are found in Europe.
“It just is not worth it for us,” he said.
Sofra’s creator denies any theft
On the other side of the Atlantic, Alex Baboglo, based in Moldova, denies that his team has done something wrong when they took Sofra.
Baboglo is CEO of the companies that published the game, Global Advertising Network Ltd. and Workpoint.
He said that Sofra was created by three teenagers as part of an internal games development program, and that while the trio “was inspired” in other games, everything in his product “was created by our internal designers from scratch.”
The lawyer Jay Kerr-Wilson, who runs the copyright practice group in the Fasken law firm, told CBC Toronto that copying the “appearance” of a video game is not legally protected.
“Where you could cross the line is whether copies specific creative elements of a game,” he said.
Kerr-Wilson said that “there are almost no litigation in these types of cases” in Canada, both because it is common for developers to take each other and because bringing litigation is expensive and, when the case crosses the borders, complex.
He said that games developers who wish to protect their work can choose to present a copyright registration before the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and present a registered trademark for any distinctive feature such as names, logos or brand.
Sharing can be made ‘in good faith’
Although Venba Swaminathan creator believes that the team behind Sofra has “purely financial motivations,” said many of the instances of games creators who borrow are a “healthy” part of their industry.
“Let’s say a game comes out, and then another game takes the mechanic and improves,” he explained. “While doing in good faith, people are happy about that, and that’s how the medium progresses.”
That tracks with what Kris Alexander, a Metropolitan University Professor of Toronto who teaches game design, has observed.
“It is quite common” to see similar elements appear in different games, he said.
In some cases, Alexander said, it becomes a way to honor a beloved game, for example, the Stardew Valley agriculture game, which described as a “love letter” and “spiritual successor” by Harvest Moon of 1996.
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In other cases, similar games lead to accusations of plagiarism or even litigation, for example, Sony’s decision last month to sue the Tentent rival games company for creating what he describes as a “servile clone” to his Horizon series.
“The waters can be a bit muddy,” Alexander said. “Because we don’t know how many people try to pay tribute and how many people are trying to earn a quick dollar.”
