The mall cops in the iTunes App Store today finally ejected Armed Heroes Online, a Chinese-published MMO, sold only in iTunesâ Canadian store, which evidently stole most, if not all, of its audiovisual assets from the PC dungeon-crawling hit Torchlight. The takedown came about a week after demands from Torchlightâs lawyers.
Players always come first. There, we prefer to modify some parts of Armed Heroes Online where have caused those disputes rather than go on arguing. As long as this carves out a way out of angry disputes, it will be definitely worth our efforts.â
At last, we want to make clear, if necessary, that we would like to submit the documents, files and other materials related to the game developing to Apple to prove the originalities of the game and the efforts we devoted into the game developing.
On Saturday, Travis Baldree, the president of Torchlight publisher Runic Games, told Kotaku that Armed Heroesâ copying was so comprehensive it even included the sound effect for a âjoke weaponâ in Torchlightâa sound effect which is the voice of a Runic developer.
Baldree also told Joystiq that he looked through the files for Armed Heroes and found a sound asset manifest that was âverbatim all of our sound files, including our own misspellings.â
Appleâs removed the game from its stores and, one assumes, it wonât be coming back.
Alleged Torchlight copycat Armed Heroes taken down from App Store [PocketGamer]
