Schedule 1, the indie drug dealing sim that's burning up the Steam charts, has now gotten the ultimate confirmation of its popularity: a series of obvious lookalike games clogging up the PlayStation Store. The rip-offs have been torn down, but the dev behind Schedule 1 says a real console port is certainly possible once the game's further into development.
"As you may be aware, there have been some games on the PlayStation store appearing over the past few weeks with the name ‘Schedule I’ in them," the game's developer, who goes simply by Tyler, says in a tweet. "Just confirming these are not affiliated with me in any way. I’d love to port Schedule I to console when the game is at the right stage for that, but I will announce it to the Schedule I community well before it happens."
Schedule 1 is currently in early access and is expected to remain there for "approximately two years," according to the Steam page. It's not unheard of for early access titles to land on console, particularly with Xbox's Game Preview program, but typically, console ports come alongside a 1.0 release on PC for most indies in a similar position. Exactly what Tyler has in mind for Schedule 1 remains to be seen.
The fake games have been repeatedly noted by the community over the past few weeks, all bearing the Schedule 1 title alongside subtitles like "Syndicate" or "Dope Empire." None had apparently been released, and they've all apparently been taken down. These sorts of lookalikes have been cropping up on PSN for some time, as we saw with a bizarre GTA: Vice City knock-off that appeared last year.
Of course, Schedule 1 itself bears some resemblance to the Drug Dealer Simulator games that have been on Steam for years, prompting a "necessary" investigation but "no lawsuit" from the publisher of those titles. But there's a distinct difference between being similar to a previous game and outright pretending to be the same thing, and it's clear which side of the divide these PSN titles are falling on.
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