Nomada Studio's Gris was an acclaimed game that received attention last year for its artistic style (among other things), and now publisher Devolver Digital has tweeted a comparison video drawing attention to this artwork and a similar version that appears in the Fabulous app.
"The Fabulous app (@GetTheFabulous) ripped off GRIS and is reminder to all devs to be mindful of big companies and brands stealing creative work from smaller studios," they say.
Since then Fabulous itself has issued a statement on Medium, saying that "we concluded our investigation and included a statement from one of our designers. We consider this as a mistake that we proceeded to fix as soon as we heard rather than something we did with the goal of hurting".
On top of that, the same post includes an anonymous statement from the designer in question, who explains how this situation happened.
"When I was about to start the animation, I told our design lead. that I was gonna get inspired from a game called "Gris" for the animation. He never played the game, so he gave me the OK for "getting inspired"," they wrote."I took the word "inspired" way too far."
"I fully realize that I ripped off the game now, but in the animation process that wasn't my intention at all. AT ALL. I was so amazed by the game animation, especially of the character's cape that looks so much like Amber's cape and I had no idea back then how to animate her cape (cloth animation is one of the hardest things to do), so I played the game cinematic over and over and over again to grasp the cape mechanics."
Have you played Gris?