Schedule 1 debuted in March and has quickly come to be one of Steam's biggest indie success stories, with a co-op, open-world simulation of the drug-dealing life that's really caught on with players. It appears the Polish publisher behind Drug Dealer Simulator is none-too-happy with that success, and reports have begun to circulate that the company is investigating Schedule 1 for copyright infringement – which, of course, has now sparked a massive review bomb against those older games.
An apparent press release from Movie Games S.A., which publishes Drug Dealer Simulator, went up on the Polish Press Agency's business and economics site last week, as spotted by Insider Gaming. Via machine translation, the press release says a legal consultant has advised the company that Schedule 1 may mark a "potential infringement" of the Drug Dealer Simulator intellectual property.
No specific legal action against Schedule 1 has been detailed, but Movie Games SA says it's looking for further instances of infringement, and "decided to use the support of international law firms specialising in Australian law – which is the law applicable to the producer and publisher of Schedule 1."
It's worth noting that this press release doesn't appear to have gone live anywhere else, and Movie Games S.A. has not made a statement on it, so you might want to take its existence with at least a half-grain of salt. We've reached out to Movie Games S.A. for more information and will provide an update if we learn more.
That "producer and publisher" of Schedule 1 is a solo dev who simply goes by Tyler online, and the idea of a company like Movie Games S.A. making even the vaguest threat of legal action against the lone developer behind a far more popular game has rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. Drug Dealer Simulator and its sequel have each been hit with around 1,000 negative reviews in the past few days, many of which cite the situation with Schedule 1.
"Lmao suing a lone indie dev for making a superior game is laughable," as one DDS2 review puts it. "Like, instead of trying to actually improve your game, your first reaction was to bust out the lawyers. Pathetic. Absolutely embarrassing. You saw someone doing your job better than you ever could SOLO, with NO BUDGET, NO MARKETING TEAM, NO SAFETY NET and your fragile little ego just couldn’t take it."
"I liked the game up until they became greedy and jealous that a solo game developer, who created a game 10 times greater than theirs is so successful," a review of the first DDS reads. "I have a lot of respect for the person who is currently working on updating Schedule 1. If anyone is reading this thinking of buying DDS1, trust me buy Schedule 1 instead."
Drug Dealer Simulator had previously been quite well regarded, with nearly 20,000 reviews giving it an 87% positive rating according to a March 17 snapshot of the Steam page on the Internet Archive. It sequel fared less well, but now both games are showing from mostly to overwhelmingly negative in their recent reviews. We'll see what comes of the apparent investigation into Schedule 1, but clearly this saga hasn't endeared Movie Games S.A. to many.
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