A small yet dedicated game development studio known as Drakeling Labs, headed by its founder “Bluedrake42” released their first game “Operation: Harsh Doorstop“, a military tactical shooter completely for free to download on the Steam Store back in February.
The game itself is built on the Unreal Engine and provides full support for user modifications, Bluedrake42’s main gripe with the current gaming landscape is that developers more often than not repackage common assets for sale, essentially scamming users with half arsed games that are essentially “asset flips”.
One of the main rules that Bluedrake42 has set for his Drakeling Labs firm is that their main games will be completely free to consumers alongside not offering DLC related scams of any particular nature, such principles as this are commendable and extremely rare to see in this day and age.
Bluedrake initially gained recognition by establishing and hosting private servers for various older Mil-Sims, creating content through videos. As his involvement progressed, he delved into modding games and documented the process in his videos.
Over time, he cultivated a dedicated community of enthusiasts, leading him to embark on more ambitious projects, including larger scale game mods and eventual full-scale games of his own.
A few years ago, Bluedrake announced that his group was nearing the alpha stage of two main games. The first, Operation Harsh Doorstop (OHD), was both a game and a full engine framework intended to power their upcoming projects and fan-made games.
The second, Warfare 1944, was a separate game built in the OHD framework.
Both games were designed using UE4, with OHD’s framework serving as middleware within Unreal Engine 4 to provide common features, functions, and physics for other games like Warfare 1944.
After the announcements, Bluedrake secured a contract with the publisher MicroProse for Warfare 1944. However, disputes arose over ownership of intellectual properties about a year ago, this resulted in MicroProse gaining control of Warfare 1944 IP and severing ties with Drakeling Labs entirely, kicking them off the project altogether.
Following this, Bluedrake’s group shifted focus to the development of Operation Harsh Doorstop.
Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a completely free experience, despite going up against bigger budget offerings in the from of Battlefield, Insurgency or Squad, Drakeling Labs has a very niche cult following of hundreds of avid players each and every single day, mainly due to the fact that their game is a passion project with its own custom made assets.
So imagine the surprise of Drakeling Labs’ founder discovering that their F2P passion project had become a victim of blatant asset theft.
The discovery was uncovered by BigfryTV upon being recommended a work in progress game by the name of “Venatur”.
Venatur as a game can be easily described as attempting to cash in upon the craze of “extraction shooters” similarly to Escape From Tarkov which took the world by storm alongside being promoted by professional Twitch shills alike, Venatur is developed by an Italian firm “SiBa Games” and just so happens to be an extremely barebones rendition of games it attempts to emulate probably given by the fact that the game itself is developed by a singular developer.
Venatur is extremely clunky with its controls, mechanics and obviously PC performance, you could technically call it a passion project by a singular individual but in reality it’s just a blatant cash grab to make a quick buck, given how the game itself is being sold on its own website for the “low” price of $40 despite clearly being in a very premature and unfinished state.
And as it turns out, the game itself features a lot of readymade assets, with some of them having been blatantly stolen from Drakeling Labs’ Operation: Harsh Doorstop.
The game does in fact have or rather HAD a Steam Store listing, thankfully the game has been pulled from sale by Steam most likely due to DMCA notices issued to the wannabe developer by the folks at Drakeling Labs, however getting kicked from sale via Steam means nothing when the game page listing remains available with the game continuing to be sold via its own independent website.
According to the video made by BigfryTV as well as personally confirmed by Bluedrake42 on his Twitter account, architectural features, props, signs, and even entire buildings found their way from Operation: Harsh Doorstop onto Venatur, mostly in their original state with some of the buildings being slightly modified with a fresh coat of paint.
Bluedrake42 wrote a letter to the developer of Venatur demanding that assets belonging to him be removed from their project and naturally the developers of the asset flip in question played ignorant and denied any allegations and outright refused to take action against their blatant theft of assets.
Furthermore the piece of shit behind Venatur then made demands of his own with his response message, feeling “slandered” by BigfryTV’s video proving his own misdeeds, the sole developer demanded a formal apology and would seek action of their own in the form of malicious YouTube copyright strikes on aforementioned videos.
Lots of assets for Operation: Harsh Doorstop were blatantly stolen for use with Venatur, with its developer pretending to be oblivious and ignorant and then outright threatening legal action for slander, to further prove the point at just how depraved and desperate the developer behind Venatur just so happens to be they went as far as to steal the BSP blockouts for unfinished assets.
These are prototype geometries used in Unreal to create a preliminary layout for a level, determining scale and preparing the world for gameplay considerations.
For an entire summary of the whole ordeal, Bluedrake42 himself made a long comprehensive video of his own going over the entire situation from the discovery of asset theft to the messages exchanges between Drakeling Labs and “SiBa Games” in a video tired “I’m so sick of this…”
Fortunately, this entire incident has gained public attention, leading to the removal of Venatur from sale on Steam. While this doesn’t necessarily prevent the game from being sold on its independent website, a significant number of people are now aware of the entire controversy. If Venatur resurfaces, it is likely to face immediate backlash for its blatant theft of custom-made assets from Operation: Harsh Doorstop.
The developer behind the extraction shooter can expect continued criticism and scrutiny moving forward, to the point where he’ll likely have to rebrand himself and from another fake solo game studio if he were ever to consider “releasing” another title.
