A couple days ago, I made a post addressing Pixelberry/Series Entertainment's "It Lives Within." At the time, I wasn't aware of the story, I only knew that the name was the same. Since then, I saw many people accusing it of plagiarizing our game. I decided to look into it more, and after having watched all the episodes on YouTube, the claims of plagiarism unfortunately seem to be valid. As such, I'd like to further address this situation, and provide a list of stolen ideas and art with screenshot proofs and explanations.
A few years ago, I had a video call with one of the original writers for the It Lives Series. Though I knew nothing about their original plans for the game before starting this project (including that they also intended to name the game "It Lives Within"), he told me their plans on that call. It was going to be a survivor-type cave crawl story with giant bug-inspired and creepy crawler monster enemies, where you play as a new character who is attacked by these creatures while camping and separated from their friends. From my understanding, Connor and his crew would be sort of like the Sam and Dean from SPN, acting as these experienced "hunters" who help protect them.
That is not what the story of what Choices "It Lives Within" was. At all.
This means that the AI """writers""" at Series Entertainment/PB were not creating this story based on the original writers’ plans. They made their story idea later - after ILW was completed in its entirety. Therefore, it's reasonable to follow that unlike the title, these similarities are not coincidence. Though even then, the title It Lives Within had to do with the cave setting and going literally into the earth, while the AI version has nothing to do with caves. So the reasoning for the title is not the same as the reasoning for their original title.
With all this in mind, let’s go over the similarities between our game and the Choices It Lives Within AI show. I am going to be putting it beneath a read more, in case there are people who are interested in playing ILW and don’t want to get it spoiled.
Major things they stole:
Their villain, Silas, is Matthias. Literally, that's it. He's Matthias.
Silas is an immortal man who looks just like Matthias who's been alive for almost 200 years and was a member of the Westchester cult, where he knew Cora. He wants to sacrifice redfield Noah due to his connection to the Power (Rowan anyone) as part of a complicated ritual he's put together in order to... I'm not quite sure what, exactly, as the story was a bit hard to follow. He thinks he’s all manipulative and the main crew states that "He’s getting us to do his work for him!”
And then there's his appearance. That's the same hairstyle. He's the same age. Same race. Literally, just like Connor in their story is as recognizable AI-version of his in-game sprite, that's what this guy looks like. All he's missing is the beard.
The gang's base of operations is Cora’s cabin
This one is interesting. It's such a tiny detail, and I'd grown so used to the cabin being their safe place that when Connor was like "We need to get back to the cabin" it literally took me a moment to realize - wait. They had nothing to do with that cabin in the original series. Using that as a home base was literally our idea, an It Lives Within original.
The main enemies are mind controlled townspeople working for Silas
Instead of following the precedent of the previous games and having the enemies be Power-twisted animal monsters, they decided to make their enemies humans that are mind-controlled into zombie-like beings that attack the gang in hordes. There's even a scene where the gang is driving through them in their car. This is a rip-off of It Lives Within's horrors. And on top of that, they copied the carnival scene where Harper driving through the horde of horrors.
Noah and Devon's relationship
Their relationship in this '"TV show" has suspicious similarities to their friendship/romance routes in ILW. They made Devon be redfield Noah's anchor to reality, and even had Devon use memories to help ground Noah, which we showed in the cabin scene where Devon and Noah play baseball together. And I know there were Noah x Devon shippers outside of me before ILW released, but it was never PB's plan to canonize them. So the fact that they are seemingly changing course to canonize them after they grew so popular in the fan version feels a bit too coincidental.
Scraping fan art for their AI animation frames
But what's even more egregious is that they have even stooped to scraping from fan artists, who have nowhere near the same following or exposure as our project does. Seriously, what are the odds that the MC they choose to use matches this artist's MC's race, gender, hair, and outfit exactly, that they used Noah's old outfit, that they are literally positioned on the same sides of the image? It's blatant plagiarism, and it's despicable. @errajay I'm so sorry they did this.
These are the biggest similarities, but considering that it was only like 15 minutes of content, that means that a high percentage of the story was stolen. Sure, the exact details of "Silas's" plan are different (he's like a horcrux for the "entity" aka power and he was split into 43 parts and Noah's one of his parts and he needs to kill him to get it back and be free or something) it's the same concept: immortal man who's trapped making a complicated ritual requiring sacrifice while manipulating people to get everything into place.
If you want to see for yourselves, please find it on YouTube. Do not support them with clicks or traffic on their app. Thank you! Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, no AI was used in the drafting of this post 💖
romantic byler or not, the fact that Mikes worst memory from when they were killing Vecna was El disappearing and not seeing Wills dead body being pulled out of the water is insane
people trying to shame folks online for clowning the duffers, calling it "bullying" and saying we need to stop
and frankly? idgaf. people making fun of them on social media is fair game as long as they aren't actually making threats or sending messages directly to them. I'm not going to let the millionaire brothers turn into victims when they're the ones who queerbaited their most passionate fanbase for 10 years, did nothing to speak out against the homophobia their fandom cultivated, and then wrote an offensive storyline for their main gay character who they wrote to be humiliated and tortured for 5 seasons.
So Duffers, you're willing to "leave it up to (homophobic) fans" who want Robin and Vickie to break up, even though nothing is said or onscreen showing this?
Okay, then:
That "leaves" US to say Robin and Vickie are still together, AND that Mike and Will get together after the epilogue! Especially since there's actual evidence ONSCREEN that they do:
If we reject heteronormativity, take the entirety of what's in the show over 5 seasons, and don't accept at face value that "Mike was Will's Tammy" or that Mike "understood" El (BS!), then a picture emerges where the chance for Byler, within canon, was not shut down but was merely postponed by the death of El.
I had a different reaction than most did, to the "Friends? No way... best friends!" scene. I TOTALLY see the cruelty of the scene in hindsight. But at the time I wasn't aware of any cast/creator statements suggesting Byler wouldn't happen, and I still saw a through line for Byler. So I saw the tower scene as a stepping-stone to Byler. I never for a moment thought Mike would casually confess right there, overcoming his internalized homophobia just hours after he had found out Will liked him and soon before the world might end, with his girlfriend trying to save said world. (Like duh!) The only believable ways for Byler to culminate were if it was key to saving the world (e.g., Will overcoming Vecna), or if destroying Vecna meant the apparent death of Will.
What shattered any possibility of Mike confessing his feelings to Will any time soon was El's death. After she dies, he is torn with crippling survivor's guilt.
(Side note addressing Mike's high emotions and kissing El... Bylers have always insisted that their limited life experience has caused them to mistake their love, created by trauma and circumstance (AHEM JANCY AHEM) as romantic. When they're officially in a relationship and El is about to DIE, of course they'll kiss. Notably he didn't respond to a DIRECT "I love you"... how PECULIAR was that??)
Eighteen months later, Hopper tells Mike that El would have wanted him to move on.
(At this point I actually freaked out while watching thinking there'd be a clear sign that Byler would happen in the epilogue, because how ELSE would you make this pay off, but to show that Mike is moving on by dating Will? Going to his own graduation doesn't cut it!)
It's clear that Mike had felt so guilty from El's death that he had not let himself move on with his life, perhaps to even have a life. Especially when it came to romance.
When Mike goes missing and Karen calls the Hopper/Byers cabin looking for him, she says she hasn't "seen him since last night." Apparently Mike often sees his best friend Will and maybe even stays over sometimes, like in the old days!
During the D&D game, Mike IMAGINED that Will had moved on from him to find another boy, sadly describing an "acceptance" that Mike is struggling to have himself - both acceptance of Hopper's advice, and of his own possible queerness.
Mike is depressed as FUCK and is struggling to go on with his life, and who better to help him through things, after people move away, than his BEST FRIEND? And wouldn't Will, knowing that Mike is depressed, insist on staying in Hawkins or ask Mike to go with him somewhere?
The FINAL SHOT is the Byler colors of blue and yellow, with a closed door that MIKE just walked through that suggests a closet door:
Yes, the Duffers betrayed us and we got 2% of what could have been. As with Rovickie, what they ended up doing with Byler was a GIGANTIC FUDGE to cave to homophobes. But there is solace in knowing that these are the seeds that ARE planted. The (additional) crime is that Future Byler is in subtext when it should have been text; this potential for gay love stayed "in the closet." It's 2026, and it's as if Byler had to comply with the Hays Code.
Their position to leave things up to the fans -- exemplified by Mike himself telling an alternate story of El -- and their commitment to limit spinoffs to different characters, means that they do not set canon for these characters from here on out; we do.
We have the unasked-for advantage over Milevens in that Mike and El's story is over; ours has just begun. And we also are fortunate that ours is entrusted to artists (ourselves) who we know can do it justice.
