Early this morning, ROAM Kickstarter foudner Ryan Sharr posted a Kickstarter update accusing 505 Games of blatantly stealing the idea for ROAM for its most recent game, How To Survive. Admittedly, the similarities he pointed out actually do seem fairly legitimate as a basis for suspicion, and he openly encouraged people to look at the release video footage for both games to compare themselves. At the time of the update, he was not sure how he was going to proceed.
He has since decided to proceed by retracting his accusation entirely.
In the hours since his original accusation, new information has been brought to his attention. While much of the assertion of copying was based on having not seen any information about How To Survive before they had access to at least the basic concept of ROAM, apparently How To Survive existed prior to that on a French website under the title Monster Island.
Ryan Sharr apologized for causing the scene he did, noting that he should have made his accusation less publicly as to avoid embarrassing either 505 or himself, regardless of the validity of the claims.
Hopefully other companies can take the lesson to heart. No one enjoys such dirty accusations, especially when they turn out to be more questionable than originally assumed.
