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Some Among Us developers are expressing their frustration with Fortnite's new limited-time Impostors mode, which they see as a blatant copy of their own game.
Fortnite debuted its Impostors mode this week, and it's hard not to notice the similarities to Among Us. Impostors allows up to 10 players to join a match, in which eight of the players become Agents of the Imagined Order and the other two sneak around as murderous Impostors. And much like Among Us, Agents are assigned various objectives to complete, while Impostors need to blend in as much as possible. Agents win by completing all of their assignments or voting out all of the Imposters, and Imposters win by eliminating all of the Agents, whether by killing them or by deceiving other Agents into voting them out.
Sound familiar? Well, it sure does to some of the Among Us developers. Community manager Victoria Tran lamented the fact that Epic hadn't reached out to InnerSloth for a potential collaboration. "It would've been really, really cool to collab," Tran wrote in a tweet referencing Fortnite's Impostors mode. "Like game mechanics fine, those shouldn't be gatekept, but at the very least even different themes or terminology makes things more interesting?"
it would've been really, really cool to collab haha.just sad indie hours rn.August 17, 2021
Meanwhile, InnerSloth programmer Adriel Wallick hardly disguised her frustration with Epic when she shared a comic strip of someone stealing another's work. "Everything in the world was already feeling insurmountable, so this was just another fun reminder of how tiny we all really are," she added in a tweet.
Anyway - just feeling pretty bummed today. Everything in the world was already feeling insurmountable, so this was just another fun reminder of how tiny we all really are.August 17, 2021
InnerSloth co-founder Marcus Bromander also chimed in and said the company hadn't patented Among Us' mechanics for the good of the industry, but wished Epic had been a little more creative with Fortnite's Impostors mode. "Is it really that hard to put 10% more effort into putting your own spin on it though?" he asked.
Programmer Gary Porter shared a comparison of Fortnite's Impostors map and the Among Us Skeld map, adding that despite not having worked on that particular map, he was "still kind of offended."
We didn't patent the Among Us mechanics. I don't think that leads to a healthy game industry. Is it really that hard to put 10% more effort into putting your own spin on it though?August 17, 2021
I wasn't even around for the development of Skeld and I'm still kind of offended. Anyway that's my piece on the whole thing. Gonna get back to adding butts to among us or whateverAugust 17, 2021
Needless to say, the devs at InnerSloth aren't amused by Fortnite's Impostors mode, but hopefully their protests contribute to a greater awareness in major studios when they're making content inspired by much smaller studios' games. I can only imagine both studios benefiting from even a surface-level collaboration, and it sounds like InnerSloth would've been more than welcoming of just such a thing.
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