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. He no longer works for Pixelberry, and did not work with them at the time of the video call. 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 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's been alive for almost 200 years and was a member of the Westchester cult, where he knew Cora. Matthias is an immortal man who's been alive 200+ years and was a member of the Westchester cult, where he knew Cora. Silas wants to sacrifice redfield Noah due to his connection to the Power 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. Matthias wants to sacrifice Rowan, due to their connection to the Power, as part of a complicated ritual he's put together in order to gain more power and freedom and heal the corrupted Power. Silas thinks he’s all manipulative and the main crew states that "He’s getting us to do his work for him!” Matthias thinks he's all manipulative, and gloats about being a "puppet master" and getting people to do his work for him.
And then there's his appearance. That's literally the same hairstyle - even has the part on the same side and the same curly swoops. He's the same age. Same race. Literally, just like Connor in their story is a recognizable AI-version of his in-game sprite, that's what Silas looks like to Matthias. 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 with that attack the gang in hordes. This is a rip-off of It Lives Within's horrors, which are power-corrupted townsfolk that Matthias takes advantage of to oppose the main crew. And on top of that, they copied the carnival scene where Harper drives through a horde of horrors, including a scene where Devon drives through a horde of mind-controlled/zombified townsfolk.
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 💖
Holy shit, this is outrageous. I have no words. And the side-by-side with the fanart? Oof. I’m really glad I refuse to play that AI bullshit and so it will never be canon to me. And I am very much looking forward to supporting the Obsidian Cut when it releases. Sending lots of love, because even I’m frustrated for you and I had nothing to do with your ILW. Your It Lives Within (forever the real It Lives Within) was genuinely outstanding, and clearly had so much love and effort poured into every bit.
the way some people in this fandom will slip into the grand territory of homophobia to prove their point is fascinating.
you know practically all of the guys who play choices are gay, bi and trans men. you know this because every time you start on your bullshit we will tell you that we started playing because we are desperate for gay stories—positive stories where the main character romances another man. because fuck, a lot of “gay” stories have us being brutalised, abandoned, ignored or dying of fucking AIDS and we’re sick of seeing only that.
so when we saw ads of a mobile app that goes: “hey! you can play as a man who loves other men in these cute fantasy/sci-fi/mystery stories” sincerely excuse us for being interested.
but continually saying “men are already catered to in games” when responding to a group of gays being annoyed, disappointed or pissed off that the company that spouts itself as ‘loving representation 🏳️🌈’ won’t let them play as a gay character because it might not be profitable; you’ll look like an absolute asshole and that detracts from your argument, so you have to ignore the fact that they are not represented well in games—and that is homophobic.
The actions of those on the street as well as the voices and posts of our players are making a difference at Pixelberry. We hear you. Read our latest blog for our plan going forward: www.pixelberrystudios.com/blog/2020/6/15/representation-at-pixelberry
“However, I’m embarrassed to say, we became complacent. In particular, I, Pixelberry’s leader, became complacent. Because we started off well, I assumed we were continuing to do well with representation in Choices. Then, as more competition entered the space, sometimes directly copying us, I and others on the team became more focused on ensuring we were making enough money to support our team and avoid the layoffs we’d experienced at other companies. We made a conscious choice to rely more on data, and let player behavior drive our content. But what we failed to account for is that in relying on data derived from a biased society, we in turn ended up reinforcing and recreating society’s biases, instead of pushing against them.”
This part. We all knew it was money and data driving them and I am glad they admit and acknowledge the flaw in that, the biases that they reinforced with their content.
Hopefully they live to the promises they make here and follow through with the changes they outlined.
In light of current events in the U.S., we’ve refrained from our regular Book Club post, and instead will use this space to amplify awareness of #BlackLivesMatter.
I see you finally got wise and made a statement, Pixelberry. The only problem is that the content on your app doesn’t reflect anything this post claims to stand for.
Quite frankly, I could spend all day describing the unacceptable treatment of the black characters in your stories. Seeing as our real life situation is terrible enough, let’s just hit the highlights, shall we?
Your most recent indiscretion involves none other than Rafael Aveiro of Open Heart, an Afro-Latino man who you sidelined and then wrote out of the narrative completely in favor of giving more screen time to a white male despite the fact that he already had an overwhelming amount of screentime in comparison to every other love interest in the story.
Another notable case is that of Shane Parker of Platinum, the MC’s best friend and optional love interest. When the player promises to attend his film screening that is important to him instead of attending the knockoff Met Gala and later optionally stands him up, Shane is portrayed as bitter and unsupportive by the narrative. In addition, he also suffers because the other two love interests have a bigger role in the story and consequently receive more content.
As if those scenarios weren’t damning enough, your treatment of black characters, but especially black woman, who aren’t love interests is ABYSMAL.
Let’s revisit Open Heart. Aurora Emery, a fellow intern at the beginning of the story, is immediately placed in an adversarial position to the MC. She is also targeted by the main group for the egregious crimes of being good at her job, being related to a woman in a higher position than her and not being instantly friendly to the MC. She is later made to apologize for these things and has been consistently made to do so as of the most recent chapter (Book 2, Chapter 9). Ellen Thompson of Wishful Thinking is put in a similar situation.
Kiara of The Royal Romance is consistently villainized for showing interest in a popular love interest (Drake Walker) and is made fun of and referred to as weak for being traumatized.
Xanthe of A Courtesan of Rome is made to be yet another black female rival to the default white MC for no discernable reason and has a black scholae owner and a freed black slave (who is a love interest that they make sure to tell us is illiterate) sell her into what we now know as human trafficking because she was, once again, mean to the MC.
Ava Cunningham of It Lives In The Woods, who was featured in your sad excuse of a Black History month roll out, is given an absentee mother and an inconsiderate father. In addition, she’s determinantly made to deal with the trauma of having her close friend (the MC) killed with her personal weapon.
But wait, there’s more.
In addition to the tone deafness involved in the treatment of the characters above, your MC is almost always coded to be white. This makes the playing experience extremely uncomfortable for black players in the following scenarios:
An older white man sticking a gun in the main character’s face
the inability to sympathize and be mentored by black women in the workplace (Aurora Emery, Ellen Thompson, Xanthe to an extent)
being told that a black Desire and Decorum MC’s mother was going to be sold if she didn’t stop seeing Vincent
The Veil of Secrets MC being forced to be rude to Scarlett following the affair
Having a paywall to save a Ginny, a black child, from slavery
Being referred to as the help in The Nanny Affair
High School Story: Class Act immediately being accused for injuring another student without proof
every bullying scene in It Lives In The Woods
Enduring Brian Crandall’s verbal abuse in High School Story
the Mother Of The Year MC only being able to call Vanessa “kinda racist” when she referred to a potentially black child as a guttersnipe
…to name a few.
So when you make these posts during times of unrest and include statements like, “We see you. We hear you. We stand with you,” it comes off as disingenuous and insulting to the intelligence of black Choices players everywhere.
You wanna stand with us, PB? Then start in the office. Examine the way that your characters are treated and the circumstances we encounter. Make changes to these issues and be smarter and more considerate going forward.
Then, and only then, can you say that you hear, see OR stand with us.
After making my last edit, I felt like tweaking it to make this one for the Bianca stans, the real MVPs who have been waiting to romance her since book 1.
In my mind, Bianca would also like a ceremony by the water before moving the reception to an upscale yet fun venue, and despite wanting to finally have something off-camera so they don’t have to deal with a production team calling the shots, the entire event and the reception following it rule over social media thanks to the attendees posting millions of pictures and videos while calling it the wedding of the decade.
