In South Korea, Dark Souls has a following and fans. Youād think the makers of popular mobile game Blade would know they couldnāt get away with ripping it off. Youād think!
As tipster Sang points out, recently released action RPG Blade has hit number one on Google Playās Top Grossing chart in South Korea. Developed by South Korean studio 4:33 Creative Lab, Blade was also released on iOS. The gameās ad has been accused of knocking off Dark Souls promotional art.
Courtesy of Game Donga (via Sang), here is Dark Souls.
And here is the Blade advert, which appeared on Korean commuter trains.
Korean Dark Souls fans were quick to note that Bladeās advertisement seems to look familiar. But the similarities donāt stop there. On Korean bulletin board Todayās Humor, stills from Blade trailer were compared with stills from the Dark Souls II trailer.
Below, you can see sets of images from both trailers (the Dark Souls II images are on the top of each set, with the Blade images underneath for comparison). Note that the Dark Souls II trailer is from 2012, and the Blade trailer is from this past spring.
This is rather blatant! Gamemeca reports that 4:33 has taken down the Blade ad from Korean trains.
āWe generally do not use an ad agency but in these two cases we did,ā 4:33 told Gamemeca (via Sang). āWeāve worked with an outside ad agency to create and run these promotions. There is a clause in our contract with them saying the agency will fully be responsible if there is any third party copyright violation. Weāve sent the agency a legal note saying theyāve damaged our image.ā
ėøė ģ“ė, ź“ź³ ķģ ė ¼ėģ¼ė” ķė¤ģ§. ķ°ģķ“ ź°ģķź³ ģ¦ź° ėģ [Game Donga Thanks, Sang!]
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