Nintendo director flames Android Game for stealing his game’s assets

If there’s one thing you should know about the games industry, it’s that you don’t mess with Nintendo. Unfortunately, Android game developer Special Gamez didn’t get the memo.

Android game caught stealing Nintendo assets 

Via Automaton, Special Games’ submarine mobile game Battle Warship: State War.io is stealing heavily from Nintendo. Caught using assets from Nintendo’s own submarine series, Steel Diver, the Android game is currently under fire.

In adverts for the game, Special Gamez’ displays assets from the 3DS game Steel Diver: Sub Wars. The assets aren’t in the game, but feature heavily in trailers and adverts. Without a doubt, this is an ongoing issue with mobile games. However, it’s usually only an issue if you get caught… right?

Special Gamez has been caught. Furthermore, it’s in the worst possible way. As it turns out, they’re currently being called out by Takaya Imamura. That’s right, the director of Steel Divers 3DS.

In a tweet, Imamura called out the Android game for stealing his game. It should be noted that Imamura isn’t upset. On the other hand, he does appear intrigued about the situation. Furthermore, now that the internet knows about it, so will Nintendo.

“What is this! A Nintendo game is used in an advertising video for a different app! And it’s a game I directed!”

何だよこれ！任天堂のゲームが違うアプリの広告動画に使われてる！しかも俺がディレクションしたゲームだ！ pic.twitter.com/xxyWxVjbQZ

— 今村孝矢 / Takaya Imamura (@ima_1966) August 17, 2022

A decade-long trend 

Unfortunately, the use of plagiarised assets in mobile game adverts is incredibly common. Over the past decade, if not more, low-effort games have used a multitude of stolen assets to grab players. 

Obviously, these adverts fall under breach of copyright and false advertisement. However, mobile markets have always had bad moderation.

Hopefully, in the future, these fake adverts will be a thing of the past. However, it seems like that future is far, far away. For now, we’ll just laugh at them. 

What do you think of this situation? Do you enjoy seeing games called out? Tell us what you think of false mobile ads in the comments below. On the other hand, you don’t need to.