Archangel Studios, the developers being Bleak Faith: Forsaken, have publicly responded to accusations that it stole assets from FromSoftware titles like Dark Souls and Elden Ring for their game.
“Since the start of development, Archangel Studios has always been transparent with their community about the use of Epic Marketplace assets,” the company said in a statement sent to Insider Gaming.
“While only 10% of the game has been outsourced in this manner, it has helped speed up the development process immensely,” the statement continued. “As a three-person studio, it was a vital resource to utilize throughout the four year development. The assets in question were purchased from the Epic Marketplace in good faith and with the understanding that Epic went through the proper vetting and review process before listing them for sale.”
Archangel Studios says that it had reached out to Epic Games directly for an investigation into the matter. When they received a response from Epic’s escalation team, it stated that the assets could not be verified.
”Pursuant to the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace seller represents and warrants to Epic that they have appropriate rights to upload their content,” Epic’s response was, per Archangel Studios. “As with any store that hosts third-party content, however, Epic is not in a position to independently verify such rights, and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content.”
What Happens To The Assets In Bleak Faith: Forsaken?
Due to the inability to verify the legitimacy of the assets, not only have they been removed for purchase from the Unreal Engine marketplace, but they have been removed from Bleak Faith: Forsaken as well.
“[The response from Epic] is not satisfactory for us and so we have taken the decision to replace the assets purchased from the store over the next several days,” the studio says. “Some changes we included in the recent patches, and more are coming in the next few days. Certainly this has been a huge lesson for us and hopefully other indie creators out there too that assets on these storefronts seemingly cannot be purchased in good faith.”
Bleak Faith: Forsaken was released for PC on March 10.
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