No sooner had the Fntastic (The Day Before) studio, revived after its closure, announced its return to the industry with the multiplayer arcade Escape Factory than it again found itself at the center of a scandal.
Image source: Fntastic
Data miner Occular Malice recently noticed in Steam discussions that Escape Factory mostly consists of free or purchased materials from the Unity engine store.
Moreover, the Escape Factory codebase is based on the free demo game Boss Room, an example of a co-op multiplayer RPG from the Unity team, available for free on GitHub as a demo.
A priori, there is nothing wrong with using legally obtained third-party materials, but the developers deleted the Occular Malice topic in the Steam discussions (see a copy here), as well as other comments with discussions on this issue.
In an official response to the rumors, Fntastic called the messages circulating on the Internet “misinformation” and assured that all elements of Escape Factory were either made in-house or legally acquired.
«At Escape Factory we used [purchased] assets for some of the visuals and a small amount of code, but the art and music were 100% handcrafted by our team. Check the facts before spreading misinformation,” Fntastic urged.
Escape Factory is about the escape of exhausted workers from the deadliest factories in the world. Funds for the development of the game are being raised through Kickstarter until October 26 – so far they have raised $2.2 thousand out of $15.5 thousand.