The creator of the viral Unreal Engine 5 Superman Demo, Tyson Butler-Boschma, has been fighting a battle with scammers to take down his proof-of-concept Superman game that scammers have stolen to sell for profit on steam (we won’t be linking for obvious reasons).
Tyson says the demo was uploaded to Itch.io earlier this year, allowing players to play his proof-of-concept Superman game for free. However, at the beginning of November, Tyson claims that he was made aware that his work had been stolen and was being sold on Steam for around $10 on average, but the scammers have regularly changed the game’s pricing up to $50 at one point, Tyson told Insider Gaming.
Tyson told Insider Gaming that he filed a DMCA takedown with Steam on November 7, but the company is yet to respond. To make matters worse, the scammers are now starting to harass Tyson with abusive messages and DMCA takedown requests on his YouTube channel.
The scammers claim that Tyson used to work for the developers but he’s trying to “keep everything for himself”, they said. However, Tyson is not trying to claim anything in terms of monetary value. In fact, all Tyson wants is to make sure people are not being ripped off by purchasing a game that is available for free,
Essentially though, Tyson is now stuck between a rock and a hard place because he cannot dispute the claims without giving up his personal information to YouTube; which will be forwarded to the scammers to help settle the dispute. In short, this means that the scammers will have Tyson’s real name, phone number, and address if he decides to pursue it.
Tyson has shown Insider Gaming that he is the original creator, including dashboard analytics showing the game’s downloads and views from Itch.io.
Comments made on the Steam page warning people of the problem are now being actively taken down by the scammers in order to continue pushing sales.
You can download the Superman Demo for FREE here – https://tjatomica.itch.io/superman-ue5
UPDATE – It seems like the game has been removed from Steam following today’s coverage.
For more from Insider Gaming, check out the news that Modern Warfare 2 could be getting customizable killcams in the future.
