An eye-catching Superman demo, made in Unreal Engine 5 and widely circulated online earlier this year, has been taken and sold on Steam as an $11 game.
The original proof-of-concept demo – titled A Superman Style Flight Experience (UE5) – was created by Toybox Games’ Tyson Butler-Boschma, utilising the City Sample from Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens as a sandbox for superhero flight. In April, Butler-Boschma made the playable demo freely available via itch.io, but unfortunately, it’s here things begin to go awry.
At the start of November, Butler-Boschma was alerted to the fact an entity calling itself Hero Game Studios had taken his demo – a project he created “for fun to show what could be made” in Unreal Engine 5 – and started selling it on Steam under the name Heroes City Superman Edition with an asking price of $10.99 USD.
Initially, Butler-Boschma urged his followers to retweet his concerns and report the game on Steam. Later, however, as Heroes City Superman Edition continued to be sold despite his best efforts, he took to its Steam discussion boards to warn potential purchasers away – whereupon Hero Game Studios banned him under the guise of “hate speech”.