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So... Something very interesting happened yesterday. 

Basically, I've just submitted a game called "The Lawless Ones" to the contest over at Choice of Games. (Here's the link to the demo if any of you want to check it out.)

https://dashingdon.com/play/averymoore/villains-demo/mygame/index.php?cb=60739

So, now that the deadline is over and all the games have been submitted, I've been reading through the demos of all of the other entires to get an idea of what the competition is like (so far they're all REALLY good, so... Yeah, looking forward to polishing participation trophy.) But then I stumbled across this entry... The Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum.

https://dashingdon.com/play/nauhziy/the-gladiator-road-to-the-colosseum/mygame/

I was really enjoying the game throughout the first chapter, but then I got to the second chapter and found something very... Interesting:

Antonius is holding out a bag of bread. Your stomach growls, suddenly acutely aware of how tired and fatigued you are from the lack of sleep, food and water. Your hunger had peaked during your meal times, ebbing and flowing over the course of the day. Now, with the sight and smell of mere plain bread, your senses are thrown into overdrive. Your stomach growls hungrily, defiantly even. The rest of the slaves are worked into a frenzy, begging and elbowing each other to inch closer to Antonius. Antonius is definitely enjoying this feeling, having all the slaves throw away any semblance of dignity and grovelling at his feet to get his attention. 

A thin, sadistic smile crept across his face as he throws a few loaves of bread into the middle of the wagon.

• Scramble for the bread, punching and clawing if you have to
• Wait for someone to pick it up, before snatching it away
• Convince the slaves that Antonius poisoned the bread
• Maintain your dignity, only slaves eat from the floor

You clutch onto the small loaf, tearing it apart with your teeth. It is a little stale, but you gulp it down anyway. A smile slowly creeps onto your face as your tongue is sent into a sensory overdrive. Hunger is indeed the best sauce. You gave yourself a psychological pat on the back for your quick thinking. 

You realise that Vicetorix and Gisila have, unfortunately, not managed to get any bread. But you only have enough bread for one. You decide to...

• Share your bread with Vicetorix
• Share your bread with Gisila
• Keep the bread to yourself, you earned it

... Look familiar to any of you? If not, here's a snippet from a little game I wrote in 2014 called The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost:

It’s in the middle of one of Lula’s songs that the door to the deck flies open and you see two sailors standing outside, holding large baskets of bread. At this moment, all the slaves start calling together in their various languages, getting to their feet and holding their hands out towards the door. Lula jumps to her feet with the rest of them and starts begging for food in her own language, leaving you and Alexius alone on the ground, looking lost and confused.

Feeding time seems to have an all for one policy as the sailors start throwing rolls of bread across the hull. The slaves start grabbing it out of the air, ripping it out of each others hands, shoving as much as they can in their mouths before someone else tries to take it from them. Still, through whatever small measure of luck you still happen to possess, one of the rolls falls directly into your lap.

You hug it tightly against your chest, having only a few seconds to decide what to do with it before a bigger, stronger slave tries to take it away from you. As the oldest, it could be considered your responsibility to provide for your little brother, or you could try and use the bread to strengthen your friendship with Lula. Then again, you haven’t eaten since yesterday and you don’t know when you’ll get the chance to eat again. Maybe you should just eat the bread to keep your own strength up.

• Give the bread to Alexius
• Give the bread to Lula
• Eat the bread

... And that's just one of several similarities that I found throughout the second chapter of the game. Seemed like there were a few too many for it to be a coincidence. 

Not wanting to be a bitch, I posted on the author's WIP thread with a series of screenshots of all the scenes in The Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum that looked like they may have been "inspired" by Price of Freedom and kindly asked them if they could change them. Here's a link to the forum thread. (It should take you straight to my comment.)

https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/wip-the-gladiator-road-to-the-colosseum-updated-31-01-submitted-for-cog-contest/26462/785

So far the only response I've had from them is: "I’m at work now, so I just skimmed through your message but I will try to understand what is happening and give you a proper reply once I’m done!" ... And that was 8 hours ago. (Maybe they're working a really late shift?) 

So... Yeah, that happened. Got nothing to do now but twiddle my thumbs and wait for a response... Feel free to grab a bag of popcorn and enjoy the drama. 

*grabs popcorn*

'I will try to understand what is happening!' ....LOL, don't think it's that complicated really.

This is hilarious but I'm amazed you were able to handle it so politely, you must be pissed.

Probably trying to figure out how to quickly alter the story further so it less resembles Briar's.

I imagine he'll just claim that it's all a coincidence and stick to that excuse. That's about all he can do at this point.

I mean a scene of bread being distributed to desperate slaves in theory is common enough to get a pass, but the actual choice is the same and with other similarities in that chapter it gets harder to weasel around.

That wouldn't be very smart on his part, since obviously, his game has been submitted to the COG contest, so they already have all of the files of his original game. If he agreed to do the edits, I would be happy to leave it at that, but then if he tried to pass it off as a coincidence and refuse to change anything, I could always show the screenshots to the COG staff and let them decide whether they think it's a coincidence or not. 

I have to admit, I was kind of considering going straight to the COG staff and crying "Sir, sir! One of the other kids stole my homework!" but then I figured that wouldn't really be fair, since the rest of the game that I've seen looks completely different from POF and I don't want their game to be disqualified... (Wouldn't complain about it being docked a few points though.) 

You know it just occurred to me that I could just buy pretty much any COG game and copy and paste it here and use it as my romance entry.

The instant diversity points would just be a bonus!

Hurray for plagiarism! ^_^

Get the popcorn out guys! Exciting new update! Just got a reply from the author of The Gladiator, and apparently... It's all a remarkable coincidence! To quote just a few segments of his very long reply:

"So I took a look at your game (the original and the updated one) and it’s crazy how there are so many similarities."

"I must stress that I did not copy your game, and many of the similarities were coincidental, which I believe come from the similar subject matter and our perspectives being similar. Still, I can understand that this is really hard to believe (I can hardly believe that this is happening either)"

"I did not know of Price of Freedom until you told me about it, and I really hope you can trust me on this. It is never my intention to take credit for someone elses work and I’m so terribly sorry it appears that I have done so. This is as much a shock to me as it probably is to you."

"Now, I know this is really hard to believe"

... No shit. 

Apparently, when writing the story, the guy took a lot of suggestions from his friends and family, so the only possible explanation is that one of his friends read POF and suggested he include scenes from POF in his game, and so the poor guy wrote them all, having no idea that the whole chapter had already been done before... Not bad, I guess. Though I'm surprised it took a whole 12 hours to come up with that excuse.

Honestly, I'd be a lot more impressed if he'd just said "Oh shit! Sorry, I had no idea you used CoG as well as CYS. I figured I could just use a couple of scenes from POF and nobody would notice. My bad. I'll go change them now." ... But I guess I'll play along. All I really wanted was for the scenes to be changed anyway.

Complete denial was a strange direction to take. 'Oops, now that you mention it I vaguely recall skimming your story years ago and must have subconsciously borrowed from it without realizing, cocaine is a hell of a drug also ow, my Alzheimer's! Auntie Em is that you??? '' is what I'd have gone with.

The fact he backed down so quickly also seems odd, I'd think most people would be ready to put up a fight at implications of plagiarism if they were completely innocent.

Still not as weird as that time Stephen King ripped off The Simpsons tbf.

Yeah, that's what I was expecting too, but still, the whole "my friend suggested the idea to me" thing can't really be disproved. Either way, it doesn't matter much. Even if he did have a friend suggest the idea to him, he still admits that the "friend" must've read my game and suggested him ideas from the game, and has agreed to alter the scenes that their "friend" suggested.

“Coincidence.” Lol. Called it.

Anyway is he taking it down or are the COG judges taking it down? If they don’t that certainly doesn’t look good for their website if they’re allowing plagiarism.

The game isn't actually published on the website. It's been submitted to the CoG competition, which means that it's currently being judged. The author has suggested that he'll alter any outstandingly similar scenes, which means that those scenes would be gone before the game is published... Hopefully. >.<

Contact an attorney.

Fuck that! I'm not going to pay some guy my entire life's savings just to try and prove a point. 

If CoG doesn't take it down, and he makes money off of it, you're entitled to damages, not just an injunction.

Yeah, but it's not actually published on CoG yet, it's just been submitted for judging.

At any rate, it's something to consider if CoG fails to take appropriate action or the guy doesn't alter the scenes. Some attorneys provide free consultations.

But if both fail to act appropriately, I think when making your decision, you should consider that you're not just an amateur author anymore. I don't know if you have any aspirations of producing a novel or anything, but it's probably relevant to consider your future plans and goals.

That and the fact that he can actually profit from this distinguishes this from the clown from that Risk knock off site that copy/pasted Eternal into their forums and claimed to be writing it spontaneously.

Anyway, here's hoping CoG acts appropriately and saves you the trouble.

If I did bring it up with the CoG staff, I highly doubt that they would refuse to do anything about it. They seem to be very professional when it comes to avoiding plagiarism at any costs (obviously, like any company, their goal is to make money, and they realize that there's more money to be lost in publishing a game that could possibly be accused of plagiarism than there is money to be gained by publishing it in the first place.)

... And, oh yeah! I remember that Eternal stealing guy! That was hilarious! (Particularly how he tried to get everyone to feel sorry for him afterwards.) 

Is there a thread for that? The Eternal plagiarism scandal I mean.

Also, good luck on the contest.

Thank you ^_^

Nah, Bad Mod Kiel ended up deleting it after it was resolved.

Basically coins found out some guy was posting bits of Eternal on the forums over at some obscure Risk like online game and people were making choices and generally praising him for it.

Other than internet warm and fuzzies he wasn't making any money off it and honestly I actually stumbled on someone doing something similar with Necromancer on one of those 4chan boards when I was doing my monthly narcissistic Google searches. (That one was already old and done with by the time I found it. They didn't even finish.)

In any case, he got called out and SHAMED, and despite that place being even more lawless than here, the mods deleted the thread and he was going on about about feeling like a shitty person. Lol.

The copy and pasted PM he sent to everyone who posted about it over there really made the remorse feel real.

I wish I could have seen that.

"How long did it take you to write this?"

"Oh, you know, I just wrote it spontaneously."

"So talented! "

 

He was posting a page at a time and giving everyone the choices to vote on, after which he wrote the next part with amazing rapidness and basked in their praise.

Daymn! You wrote 7 paragraphs in 3 seconds? That's amazing!!! 

Remember reading the Lawless Ones back when it was called Villains, thought it was pretty sick, didn't know it was you. Anyway, good luck with the contest and also this guy's a fucking idiot.

Awh, thank you! Really glad you liked it. ^_^

So someone named Sanjay started freaking out because 'he didn't like where this was going' and 'it didn't need to involve the community', so thread gets shut down.

So COG officially protects plagiarists and hushes up anyone who questions it, classy. Even when it's being handled in a completely chill and polite way.

E: wasn't sure of Briar's account name over there before this anyway, turns out we've interacted and I declared her one of the good ones without even realizing who she was.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Stolen work? What stolen work?

Briar had her old Briar_Rose name and avatar over there and posted with it a few times, but she must have changed it when she was making her first story over there.

Anyway, good luck with the contest.

Thanks End ^_^

I'm not worried about this right now. It might just be that the CoG staff have stumbled across it and decided to shut the thread down while they discuss how to deal with it. Or I suppose the author of the thread could've shut it down themselves.

... And awesome! Glad to know I'm appreciated across multiple platforms. ^_^

Btw did you realize you plagiarized most of your username from Avery M: Dead Man's Journal? Your entire life is self insert fanfic at this point and you probably owe Gmmmcgee some money now.

... Oh yeah. Shit, my life is a lie! ... Or is it my life? Maybe it's someone else's. I don't know any more! >.<

(Also, I stand corrected, I forgot that when a thread gets shut down, it tells you who shut the thread down. Turns out it was shut down by a mod. To be fair though, I don't think that was so much, because they wanted to "shut me up" but more because several people were arguing about it, and CoG tends to shut down threads when the discussion turns into one big argument.)

I dunno know about all of you, but that djisma69 guy seems extraordinarily retarded. 

Anyway, good on the ever progressive COG for widening their safe space so that suspected plagiarists have just enough room to huddle and squeeze in. :P

His arguments did seem quite... Strange. Not sure he understands the concept of plagiarism. His most recent argument was "Just because you wrote those scenes doesn't mean you own those scenes" ... Which is kind of exactly what it means.

Kind of reminds me of a quote from the Brock Turner case where one of the guy's insane friends said "Just because he raped somebody doesn't mean he's a rapist!" ... Yes. Yes it does. 

I didn't see that. That's great.

It's everyday bro with that plagrism flow.

Choice of Games is my city. ^_^

What really irks me is when people just parrot the old writing advice "reinvent a scene from a book" without qualifying it with "don't just reword it or slap wigs and fake mustaches on the characters". Younger and inexperienced writers might not really get what it really means. This isn't even a borderline case, in my opinion.

Anyway, best of luck in this and hopefully you won't have to track him down, key his car and slash his tires to get justice.

Thanks IAP ^_^

Also, I always thought that advice was for practice writing that you don't share (or at least don't share without pointing to the source).  I never thought it was meant for anything to be published, or shared as one's own.

I hope it all turns out satisfactorily for you, and that you do well in the contest itself.

Also, even though the reason for coming back was a negative one, I'm kinda glad you did just because I thought you were gone and I had read the story in question and really enjoyed it.  It really is a crappy move to copy someone else's work.

Well to be fair, it's not like they just copy/pasted the game. Honestly, I went through the whole first chapter without seeing any similarities at all. And nah, I'm not gone, and I'm getting back to work on POF now that The Lawless Ones is done. ^_^

Still, it sounds like they hit a few blocks and piggybacked on your work to get through those spots.  The first chapter or so was probably still when they had a lot of fresh ideas/passion.  I'm just wildly speculating at this point though, since I haven't read the other game at all.  Just yours. :)

You're gonna add at least seven more genders and monetize the fuck out of it though right 

I do like money. ^_^

My honest opinion? You are overreacting. The scene is worded differently enough to not be an actual copy and the motif of prisoners fighting over food is common enough that you can't claim ownership of it. Of the top of my head, the film "The Four Feathers" comes to mind and it is definitely not the only one. It even has a food sharing scene too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptiXfr5lJl8

Does that mean that you plagiarized that film (and others)?

Especially because you emphasize that the majority of that chapter and the entirety of his other three chapters are not similar to your story. Why would he only copy that one part and not more, if he were running low on inspiration?

This is probably either Sanjay or djisma69 

I don't think it's Sanjay. Their argument was more "It's better to let the two writers sort it out between themselves" than "The fact that five extremely similar scenes appear in the exact same chapter of both games is probably just a coincidence."

Still, I highly doubt it's a coincidence that this guy just joined the site today.

No, it is not a coincidence that I joined the site today since I joined in order to comment on this topic. It is a coincidence however that I stumbled across this thread. I am a very infrequent visitor to this site and checked your profile today to see if you have updated "The Price of Freedom", since I enjoyed your expanded version. I distinctly remember that I have pointed out a bug in your announcement thread, but unfortunately I don't remember which name I chose for my account. I only remember that I chose this avatar: https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/dota2_gamepedia/e/e6/Dragon_Blood_icon.png?version=845905cc4cf1407f48e32eee1a660cf5

Coincidences do happen...

Anyway, believe it or not, it doesn't matter to me.

 

However, what exactly is similar in the scene that you posted here? Other than the motif of prisoners fighting over food and having to decide on keeping, or sharing it. If that is plagiarism, then you have plagiarized the film "The Four Feathers". Maybe the other four scenes are different and do share more similarities - you could post them here, so that we can tell, but speaking of plagiarism in this one scene that you picked is farfetched to say the least.

advice: scroll down a little ways

There are more than two people in the world who have a similar opinion on that matter. Shocking, I know. So, no, I am neither of those two and no, I don't care, if you believe me, or not.

Post a link to your COG account or be dismissed as a shit stirring coward.

I don't have one and I am not particularly fond of COG with their "I identify as a furless reindeer and am sexually attracted to pink elephants" - demo games.

... You got a problem with furless reindeer? Somebody ban this guy for discrimination! 

It's almost like you didn't even read the OP. It wasn't the only similarity. It was bluntly stated it wasn't the only similarity. Sorry about your disability I guess, lol.

e: actually nevermind, I bet this is just that sneaky Coins again, being all sly and inscrutable.

E: nvm it's coins. I would literally rather live in an SJW dystopia with mandatory cishet white man castration than live in Asia you fucking ricebowl mad max motherfuckers 

Coins rapes the cats while eating them, he's like double-Ryder which works out to quadruple Hitler exactly, if you round to the nearest zero.

That is ridiculous. I don't live in Asia, or have ever been to Asia and your incoherent rambling doesn't make a lick of sense to me. You may not agree with what I said, but that is no reason to start spouting nonsense.

Endmaster would have been here to see through your ploy by now if your mom wasn't keeping him occupied. You're not fooling anyone with your pretend lack of reading comprehension and furry cosplay and you are going to be in so much trouble, you villainous slant-eyed miscreant.

This Joji is too small. 

Kind of frustrating that I have to explain this but, it's not the fact that the game contains a scene with slaves fighting over food that is the problem. It's the fact that the game contains a scene where the MC is locked in the hull of a slave ship with a companion that they've known since childhood and a new friend they have recently met (who doesn't speak the protagonist's language particularly well, but is still extremely friendly and talkative), and some of the slavers toss bread down to the slaves in the hull, then, once the MC gets their hands on a piece of bread, they have to choose between giving the bread to their childhood companion, giving the bread to their new friend, or eating the bread themselves.

As well as that, both chapters contain:

A scene in the hull of a slave ship where one man asks another man to strangle him to death because they would rather die than carry on living that way.

A scene where one of the slaves on the boats fights back and the protagonist has to choose between trying to help them, or doing nothing.

A scene where the sailors come down to the hull and drag the female prisoners up on deck to rape them.

Honestly, (apart from the bread scene), if I'd have seen just one of those scenes in the game, I'd have brushed it off as, "Maybe it's just a coincidence", but seeing all of those scenes together in the same chapter looks more than a little suspicious.

I understand that you obviously like the game,and want to see it do well. But just because you like the game doesn't mean that it's incapable of plagiarising scenes from another game. Even the author doesn't suggest that.

While nauhziy does insist that he's never read my game before, he also said the following: "Now, I did talk to quite a few people (friends/strangers I’ve met at writing groups / my siblings / anyone who would listen really) and a lot of them contributed a huge chunk of ideas and scenes I would never have thought of myself. And I would say that most of the chapters have been influenced as such. I.e. I talk to someone and they give me suggestions and help me with my plot. So I am guessing someone had played your game and then told me about the scenes, which I then unwittingly implemented in my game cause I thought they were great ideas."

So even nauhziy admits that those scenes are too similar to be a coincidence, and has kindly agreed to change them. If the person who wrote the game can admit that, then I find it strange that you're still insisting that it's all just a coincidence.

I'm glad to hear you're getting a satisfactory outcome.

As for this guy, he probably needs to read my PSA.

Well, those too are pretty common motifs. I agree that it sounds a bit suspicious, but not nearly enough to scream "plagiarism" with the certainty that most people here did.

 

And no, I don't actually have strong feelings about this other game one way or the other, I didn't even know it existed before I saw this thread, I just wanted to present a differing opinion, since this thread had devolved into a witch hunt. I didn't expect to be shouted down so vigorously (not by you, mind you), since I had held this site in much higher regard concerning dissenting opinions, but maybe the gap to COG is smaller than I had thought.

Really? A slave asking another slave to strangle them to death is a pretty common motif? Weird, I've not seen it before. 

"Sometimes dead is better" is a pretty common theme in fiction. Though when it's a slave in the basement of a boat who wants the Bart Simpson treatment, there are just too many stars in alignment there. Also, oddly enough, most instances of mercy killing I've seen in media are decided by the killer, not requested by the killed. E.G. The lobotomite in the movie about the psycho nurse, Khal Drogo...

May he make shitty D.C. movies in peace. 

I assure you, you understand nothing at all. In more ways than one.

Dissenting opinions are fine. Mine for instance is that you're a writhing flesh puppet whose entire brief but tormented existence matters only in the sense that it provides mild, fleeting amusement for your betters who are only half paying attention anyway.

Also, you didn't bother to read very much before charging in here and now you're backpedaling desperately, and that's fun too.

You always manage to come up with the most poetic insults. ^_^

So did someone at the Villain Lair confirm this was coins or what? If it is him, it'll save me the time.

Last I checked, he still denied it and no one was able to confirm one way or another.

The IP is coming from Austria and no other alts are popping and it isn't even a red flag IP.

So it's either some new guy (troll or not) or someone is actually using a proxy this time.

In any case, you guys have fun arguing with him. (And vice versa)

Thanks for investigating.

Meister Reineke = Master Reynard in German

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynard

 

Satisfied? That "coins" guy must be pretty dedicated if you still suspect me of being him.

Actually everyone else kept claiming it was coins, I would have guessed someone more like DrkPhoenix, KAIN or one of the other many trolls that pop in here to greet us.

Coins is a regular member here as SpartacustheGreat so if it was him, it wouldn't really matter anyway.

Oh we never actually thought it was Coins, he just happened to log into the chat right after this guy posted so we remembered he existed suddenly and just went with it to keep the COGite demoralized and confused until authorities could arrive.

Not saying it COULDN'T have been Coins, he is frighteningly good at this stuff when he wants to be and I'd totally buy some Inception level troll within a troll.

I actually bothered to dig through Briar Rose's old threads to excavate my old account to verify my story that I posted a few comments above:

http://chooseyourstory.com/Member/?Username=Sertor

I have no idea who coins is, but if it pleases you, then feel free to delete both my accounts, rest assured that I won't lose any sleep over it. But who is this "coins" anyway and what has he done that warrants to suspect every newcomer with a dissenting opinion of being him?

 

(I am getting more and more COG vibes here.)

I think you jumped into this topic without really easing yourself into the site and letting people get used to you...take your measure so to speak.  This might have been a flaw in your approach, or you might not have looked into the site enough to know what you're getting into.

I had a lot of 'Who is X' questions when I first came back, and it took me a while to get some of the players straight.

I can't say anything about the CoG vibe since I've never been there.

You are probably right.

If this was CoG you would have been banned already so stop playing this martyr card that you're somehow being "silenced and oppressed."

People are calling you a fucktard because surprise you're acting like a fucktard. If you don't like that, go get triggered elsewhere like a CoGite.

Or stay here, doesn't matter to me.

Why'd he come in here acting like a little bitch anyway? 

I dunno, I only just got here and really this is something for the CoGites and Briar to work out anyway.

I mean he's certainly free to bitch and whine on here about this topic, everyone is. But if he's whining about getting "attacked" well that's the consequences.

Maybe I am a bit taken aback by the harsh welcome, but not "triggered", I am certainly not playing a martyr card and I am not saying that I am being silenced and oppressed as you wrongly cited. Let's put it this way: I did expect a more polite atmosphere and I certainly did not expect my normally worded comment to be met with outright accusations of being some phantom troll and threats of deletion straight away. That is what made me think of CoG. My bad for assuming to find a more civilized atmosphere here.

 

"Or stay here, doesn't matter to me." - At least something that we can agree on.

Lol. You haven't lurked here nearly enough if you were expecting a polite atmosphere!

If anything that's why some prefer this place over CoG. Arguments along with colorful insults are preferred over here rather than trying to word everything in such a way to avoid offending 500 different genders.

In any case, nothing is being deleted. The thread has been too entertaining for that anyway.

Well, there is a fine line between sensible politeness and insane political correctness. To reject that extreme, one does not have to embrace the extreme on the other end of the scale. But I'll still choose the coarse atmosphere here over the insane political correctness of other sites any time. The lesser of two evils and so on.

The thread would have had to have been locked and deleted before you even got here to remind you of COG, lol.

Been having a look through the rest of The Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum. Found a scene in the game where you're in a large group battle and two of your friends need help. The protagonist has to choose which friend to help, resulting in the other friend dying as a result.

Seems very similar to the scene in POF where in you're a group battle and have to choose between saving either Zeru or Gerda.

But is there the option to save both of them if you have a high enough stat and make the right choices like in POF? Because if so, yeah, can definitely add that to the number of scenes that were "inspired" by POF.

E: well, less inspired by POF directly, more "inspired by something a friend who may or may not be real who may or may not have read your story suggested to me. I may or may not have made this up to cover my ass from accusations."

I don't think so. I suppose it's possible that the game had an option to save both of them if I'd made certain decisions and had certain stats, but I didn't get the option to save both in the play-through I'm doing right now.

Ah, oh well. One thing I never liked about COGs was the lack of a 'go back' feature, would save a lot of time and headaches.

It really would. (This particular game seems to have unbelievably high stat checks, so it's really easy to die.)

To be fair on the guy, I've read through a very large chunk of the game, and that fight scene seems to be the only other similarity I could find. It's only the second chapter that I'm really worried about. Unfortunately, I can't check the rest of the game, since I've hit some kind of glitch in the game where it loops the same two scenes over and over. >.<

I mean cut the guy some slack, chances were very slim the author of a gladiator game on a completely different site was going to wind up in the same contest as he was, years later and under a different username. He couldn't have reasonably expected to get caught. We should have more sympathy.

Yeah, it's a pretty weird coincidence. 

Well, despite my long and endless bitching, I'm glad to say that the story has a happy ending. The author of The Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum has messaged me and agreed to completely change the scene with the bread throwing, the scene with one of the slaves being strangled to death, and the scene where you get to choose whether to help one of the slaves involved in a struggle on the ship.

I am still kind of worried that people will think that POF copied his game, but I've come up with a great solution... Get POF published on the site first. 

I've pretty much already completed the updated version, with only a quick read-through and a few edits to go through, and, according to what I've heard, the judges for the COG comp don't think that judging will be finished until at least June. That gives me plenty of time to complete edits, get the game beta-tested and do the artwork for the cover. Hopefully, that means that POF will be published on the site before The Gladiator is. ^_^

Also, it's date stamped here for further reference.  Though I'm not sure how different the two versions are.

They're completely different, apart from one chapter, which is incredibly similar.

(And that's true about the date stamp, but CoG releases games on Google Play and the App Store, and you can't respond to comments left on those sites.)

Hmmm, good points.  Well, I hope everything ends up for the better!

Thanks. ^_^