Gaming Blend has news that 7 Days to Die was pulled off Steam due to copyright infringement with some of it's art assets.
More information.Earlier this week the open-world zombie game 7 Days To Die was pulled from Steam. Earlier today I spoke with the man responsible for the game's removal. Here's what I learned.
7 Days To Die's Steam Greenlight page was taken down due to a copyright violation. The takedown notice was filed on behalf of Tripwire Interactive, the developer of co-op shooter Killing Floor. As it turns out, 7 Days features a zombie that resembles a striking resemblance to the Clot, one of the monsters in Killing Floor.
Tom Buscaglia, the lawyer who filed the takedown notice, explained the sequence of events to me. It all started last year when someone took the Clot model from Killing Floor and began selling it on the Unity Store. 7 Days studio Fun Pimps, not realizing that this asset was stolen, purchased the model for use in their game.
Toward the end of the summer, Tripwire noticed the Clot model in a trailer for 7 Days. Vice president Alan Wilson reached out to Fun Pimps to explain that the asset belonged to them. Wilson apparently left the conversation with the understanding that Clot would be removed from 7 Days.
However, two weeks ago, Tripwire saw that the 7 Days trailer still had their character (Buscaglia attributes this to "flakiness" on Fun Pimps' part). What's more, a playable alpha build is now in the hands of players who backed the game. So, they called their lawyer.