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 💖
Vaxlinc wound-tending just because monster-hunting can be a dangerous business (but umm worth it if it means Lincoln holds his face like that? Vax is in looove)
Thank you @lilyoffandoms and @vireja so much for this 🥹🥹(art by the latter!)
I got @kilvalr as my giftee! For your gift, I decided to make an edit of your ILW MC Vax! I admit I'm not as familiar with ILW, but I figured the Kaine CG suited him well <3
TYSM for giving me the chance to do this, and for being here in the fandom! Your edits are fantastic (and lowkey inspired me to get into CG edits myself) and your characters seem really cool, and I hope to get to know you better later on! <3 <3 <3
Also TYSM to @oh-so-youre-a-nerd for hosting this exchange!!!
since summer is here and i now have infinite free time, i thought i'd do a little introduction (because let's be honest everyone has forgotten this blog, me included)
this blog is multifandom! mainly focusing on harry potter, red dead redemption, and choices
i write fanfic (ao3: redsc4rs) and make art too sometimes!
i love discussing anything within these fandoms so i would absolutely LOVE for you guys to drop me asks :) i find it a lot easier to discuss things if given a prompt lol
*I would like to start off by saying these are just my opinions. You do not have to agree or disagree. If our don't like what I am saying that is perfectly fine but please keep all negative opinions to yourself. Thank you!*
Before Pixelberry fell to the AI waste side, Choices was pumping out incredible stories, Desire and Decorum, Hero, Elementalists. I loved all these stories, but still to this day, my favorite series has always remained the It lives trilogy. I've play both It Lives in the Woods and It Lives Beneath and played It Lives Within multiple times, and I am utterly obsessed with all three books. However, It Lives in the Woods has a special place in my heart, as being the first book in the series and what got me obsessed with it in the first place.
But, another thing has also remained over the years and that is my utter dislike for the ending of ILITW. In my route I was able to save all of my friends, sacrificed myself to become the new monster, and Noah ended up as a fugitive on the run. The final episode of the series takes place a year after the end events of the year before, and after Jane defeat. There is a memorial for those who got hurt or died during the incident upon the town.
The episode starts nicely and shows us what all the character's have been up to and it seems their living their best lives, (except Noah. Obviously). My issue starts at the very beginning of the memorial service when Mayor Green comes up to Connor and asks him if he wants to make the speech since none of ILITW's MC's friends wanted to. Okay? I can understand this, their trying to move on and probably don't want to speak on what happened, makes sense. However, I find it super weird that they at least don't want to talk about the MC. You know, their supposed friend who sacrificed themself to save them all, who not 5 chapter's ago they all claimed was the glue of the group and the one who spent the entirety of the book being the group therapist. They don't even need to speak on what happened, they could just have said a nice few words about the MC and that would have been fine.
And I'm sorry, but your asking Connor of all people to give the speech. Why? If you don't go the love interest route with Connor, this decision makes even less sense. Because he literally had nothing to do with the story up until the last few chapters and he spent the rest of the book being out of the loop with everything or just not being there. He's not even mentioned unless he's on screen, no one gives him a single thought outside of his onscreen appearances. Perhaps by this point Choices was already setting Connor on a bigger path to eventually take the helm and be the one to lead the big fight against the Power like they had originally planned. I still think this was a weird choice.
But you know what's even weirder. The fact that MC's own PARENTS didn't speak at the memorial. I honestly think this was a really bad writing choice and it literally makes no sense. There's no reason MC's parents shouldn't have been present at the memorial, and it makes even less sense that they wouldn't say anything. My only guess as to why Choices made this weird decision is because they didn't want to create sprites for MC's parents. But even this doesn't make sense, I don't know why they didn't just re-use sprites from another story, it's not like they've never done it before. At the very least if they weren't going to have MC's parents appear on screen they could have at least had Connor mention that MC's parents would be coming up to make a speech after him and have the screen fade to black before hand, leaving the implication there. Or have Connor comment on the fact that they didn't want to attend the ceremony as it would be too painful. At least have SOMETHING. Honestly this is all connected to another argument regarding MC's character but that's another discussion for another day.
Another gripe I have with this scene is Connor's actual speech. He starts of by talking about Cora and it's very sweet and he speaks very fondly of her despite never actually getting to meet her. And yet when it comes down to talking about the MC, someone he's known since he was a kid, his speech is incredibly hollow. He doesn't speak on MC's sacrifice, he doesn't say anything sentimental about them, in fact he speaks more about himself then the MC. He speaks about his point of view, his feeling's, what he should or shouldn't have done during the night of the attack. The whole scene feel's like such a derailment to both his and the MC's character and doesn't paint him in a very flattering light. And this also just proves why he shouldn't have given the speech. His emotional connection to the MC, in a non romance route specifically, is non existent, he's not their friend, (there is a difference in being friendly to someone and being their friend), the two rarely interact, in fact you literally have to pay diamonds to interact with him more beyond a few surface level conversations you guys have. He has no real attachment to the MC beyond being the big brother of one of their friends and his only attachment to the overall story is due to being the big brother of said friend.
At the end of the ceremony, all our friends (save Noah. Again, obviously) sit around and promise to stay in touch with one another. This honestly would have been a great moment for them to have their own, quiet service and talk about the MC and their own feelings about them. And...they don't. Dan says that he misses "them". But who is this them? Because it's not the MC, within the story you can only choose he/him pronouns or she/her pronouns. Is he referring to the other people that were killed off during the attack at homecoming? It's hinted that some people died during the attack. Like, bystanders who we never even see. This may sound harsh, but why would they care about a bunch of random ass people who they don't even know? Why don't they just say they miss the MC, again, their FRIEND. This was a weird line. And then when they do mention the MC it's only as a "gee, I wonder what happened to them after they friken died, wonder if their a power hungry monster now? Ah well."
This leads into another issue. No offence, but, are our friends just stupid? Did they learn nothing? Like they know what happens now when they play the game. Someone gets killed off and becomes the new monster. And when they do, the utter isolation and Power warps their brain and turns them into an actual monster. Now fair enough, they didn't know about this with Jane, so their not at fault for not doing more about that as they were kids, and weren't even aware that she was the new monster and therefore didn't help her and stop her from being corrupted. But now they do know. And their still choosing to ignore the issue. They know that the MC is most likely the new monster now. I get that they don't want to dredge up old wounds and trauma. But none of that will matter if the MC falls to the same downward mental spiral that Redfield and Jane went down that led to them becoming so malicious and just repeats the cycle of pain, torment and horror another 10 years into the future. All because they left their friend, who I shall remind you again, sacrificed themselves so they could live, to rot in the woods with nothing but the power and vague, painful memories that will slowly fade until they turn into exactly what their predecessor's became. And they only didn't fall off the deep end because the guy the friends now hate, who tried to kill them all to save the previous monster, returned to a town where he's wanted for murder all to keep the MC's sanity intact.
I feel the whole finale was a mess and was not handled with the care it should have been. It was very surface level and should have focused more on the MC, especially in the latter half during the memorial. May I just say, thank god for ILW because I feel that was the only saving grace for that horrid finale. And it wasn't even made by Pixelberry.
