Vic

A couple days ago, I made a post addressing Pixelberry/Series Entertainment's "It Lives Within." At the time, I wasn't aware of the story, I only knew that the name was the same. Since then, I saw many people accusing it of plagiarizing our game. I decided to look into it more, and after having watched all the episodes on YouTube, the claims of plagiarism unfortunately seem to be valid. As such, I'd like to further address this situation, and provide a list of stolen ideas and art with screenshot proofs and explanations.

A few years ago, I had a video call with one of the original writers for the It Lives Series. He no longer works for Pixelberry, and did not work with them at the time of the video call. Though I knew nothing about their original plans for the game before starting this project (including that they also intended to name the game "It Lives Within"), he told me their plans on that call. It was going to be a survivor-type cave crawl story with giant bug-inspired and creepy crawler monster enemies, where you play as a new character who is attacked by these creatures while camping and separated from their friends. From my understanding, Connor and his crew would be sort of like Sam and Dean from SPN, acting as these experienced "hunters" who help protect them.

That is not what the story of what Choices "It Lives Within" was. At all.

This means that the AI """writers""" at Series Entertainment/PB were not creating this story based on the original writers’ plans. They made their story idea later - after ILW was completed in its entirety. Therefore, it's reasonable to follow that unlike the title, these similarities are not coincidence. Though even then, the title It Lives Within had to do with the cave setting and going literally into the earth, while the AI version has nothing to do with caves. So the reasoning for the title is not the same as the reasoning for their original title.

With all this in mind, let’s go over the similarities between our game and the Choices It Lives Within AI show. I am going to be putting it beneath a read more, in case there are people who are interested in playing ILW and don’t want to get it spoiled.

Get This Right has the sweetness! If Aerin were the one to propose, it would definitely be a sincere, fumbling thing as he got in his own way (his love confession in Book 3 if MC doesn't say it first definitely leans that way)! And I'm not counting out MC having to jump in to save him from himself on it.

"I'm gonna be the man you want." "Guess what? You already are!"

Otherside has that sharper, more desperate edge! And the afterlife imagery totally works with his hope to have a fresh start there. (It's so interesting that he ultimately votes to go back, because at first he seems pretty into staying.)

"Young boy living with a price on my head, better run through the night or I'm better off dead."

I've already talked about Jack Wolfe, who played Gabe in the West End run of Next to Normal. The overt sweetness with slight sinister edge. More the idea of him than the reality to me.

So I'll also offer Michael Arden from the 2004 cast of Bare. It has a sad edge, reminiscent of watching MC overwhelmed with all the responsibility they've been kind of forced into.

"Everything's an act when you're pleasing everyone, and he assumes that role to such renown."

Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely taking the scene, but this is such a bad look for MC in my playthrough, in which she abandons her very injured boyfriend, to be healed by Nia, to wander round the cave for funsies despite the fact that (1) he got injured protecting her and (2) she’s also a healer herself (both magical and non-magical)