Update 11/14/2022: No response yet to Valve's request for comment, but Heroes City Superman Edition has now been removed from Steam.

As soon as Unreal Engine 5 became widely available, developers began using the tool to create cool proof-of-concept videos. Among them was a demo created by Toybox Games developer Tyson Butler-Boschma this past April that showed Superman flying through a city in Epic's game "The Matrix Awakens."

The demo was a reworking of a demo Butler-Boschma had previously made, this time for free on itch.io for people to enjoy. The demo was released for free on itch.io, with Hero Game Studios claiming copyright.

Who dat' A true supervillain collective, apparently, Hero Game Studios released Heroes City Superman Edition on Steam on November 1, and as you can imagine, it's a straight-up rip-off of Butler-Boschma's work! and sold at a price (£9.29 / $10.99).

"Are you ready for a unique experience where you choose your own hero and explore on a vast, realistically prepared map?" says Steam's description.

"In heroes city, choose your own hero and experience flight experience action. More big updates are coming soon." Especially since this studio never made this game in the first place.

"Someone uploaded my Superman demo to Steam and is selling it as a full-priced game. 'I made this just for fun, to show what I can do. This is a scam. The demo is free on Itch."

After asking people to "report this crap," another development occurred: Hero Game Studios began going after Butler-Boschma, first banning his account from posting on the game's Steam forum, then on Youtube, where he began claiming copyright on his content on Youtube.

Yes, they ripped off his game and now his account is suspended for trying to do something about it. This brazenness is worthy of Lex Luthor.

"They are outright attacking and harassing me. I'm at a complete loss at this point, Steam isn't doing anything for me and I feel the same about Youtube."

Hero Game Studios responded to one of the many negative reviews, claiming that Butler-Boshma was a disgruntled former employee.

"Our games are not stolen. One of the former developers of our user team TJ ATOMICA left our team a long time ago and now he claims that the entire project is his. However, this is an outright lie. We own all the rights to the game and the development process. The reason why he did this is because sales were increasing quite rapidly. He thinks he can make money from this."

Butler-Boshma's LinkedIn lists work at Plastic Wax and Grease Monkey Games, both of which appear to be unrelated to Hero Game Studios, and Toybox Game Studios (co-founder). There is also ongoing involvement with Toybox Game Studios (co-founder).

"Yeah, it's total BS," Butler-Boshma said in a DM.

"Their copy-and-paste response to my Steam review proves just that.

"I thought it was plausible that they made this up. He elaborates on the same color for every character, the shape of the body, the choice of boots, and especially the physics of the cloak. 0]

Butler-Boschma bought the game to check it out. Then I found the opening level, which I created from scratch. This made me 100% sure that this project was created by me and that this developer had simply downloaded this work, stolen it, and appropriated it as his own."

As of this writing, "Heroes City Superman Edition" has been on sale for 13 days, and Butler-Boshma was apparently informed of this on November 2. So perhaps there have been reports about this game, but Steam has yet to do anything about it. His Youtube account is still down thanks to a copyright claim.

Most notable in this case is the apparent copyright infringement by one of the world's most famous superheroes, Butler-Boshma. Butler-Boshma's original demo was certainly clear about what it was about, but it omitted things like the "S" logo, and most importantly, it was not a for-profit project. Not the sort of thing that Warner Bros. lawyers would necessarily care about.

But the game now bears the Superman name and is clearly marketed in the world's largest PC market. Butler-Boshma is right to be upset that Steam has yet to address any of this.

I contacted Steam and asked what was going on and if this game would be removed.

"The game is free, don't buy this," Butler-Boshma said." The audacity of using heroes like Superman for this villainous garbage"