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EGLS to 'modify some parts' of its iOS MMO in wake of Torchlight asset theft accusations

Chinese developer Entertainment Game Labs will remove "some parts" of its game, Armed Heroes Online, the company tells Joystiq. Those "parts," it sounds like, are the ones that Runic Games is saying were stolen from its Torchlight franchise. "Players always come first," EGLS said in a statement. "There, we prefer to modify some parts of Armed Heroes Online where have caused those disputes rather than go on arguing. As long as this carves out a way out of angry disputes, it will be definitely worth our efforts," the statement reads.

Despite the alterations coming to AHO, its developer sticks by the game, remaining defiant that any of Runic's Torchlight assets were used in the creation of its iOS MMO. "We want to make clear, if necessary, that we would like to submit the documents, files, and other materials related to the game developing to Apple to prove the originalities of the game and the efforts we devoted into the game developing," the statement says.

Runic Games president Travis Baldree contends that he's already looked through AHO's files, however, and that they're far more damning that EGLS wants to admit. "I also downloaded the app, and you can just unzip them and look at any iPhone app. And there was a sound manifest that listed all the sound files in the game, and they were verbatim all of our sound files, including our own misspellings," Baldree told us in an interview yesterday. "Our technical artist Adam Perin did voices for a sword called 'The Sword of Adam.' And it had goofy little things that he would say when you swung the sword. And those were in there [Armed Heroes Online], even in one of their videos," he said.

For Runic, this solution – should it actually play out – is exactly what Baldree was hoping would happen. "We're really just trying to get the thing pulled down from the App Store and to have them use their own assets. We were a little baffled by their initial response, and we'd be more than happy to talk to them and see what's up," he said. As of right now, Armed Heroes Online isn't available via the iTunes App Store, and it's seemingly been pulled by Apple following Runic's takedown request.

See the full statement from EGLS after the break.

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Official Statement from EGLS Creator of Armed Heroes Online

In recent several days, there are lots of controversial discussions about Armed Heroes Online. We believe it should be necessary to introduce Armed Heroes Online to who may have never played the game so to help understand what kind of game it is before going further discussion.

Armed Heroes Online is exclusively oriented to iOS/Android mobile devices. Due to the performance gap between PC and mobile devices, assets from PC games do not go for mobile devices. We did great efforts to do each modeling, mapping, bone construction and action by our own on our self-developed 3D engine. Otherwise, we are unable to display each scene of Armed Heroes Online so great on mobile devices.

Besides, Armed Heroes Online is fully a MULTIPLAYER ONLINE game. The core gameplay is items farming based on energy system. Also players are provided with various other gameplays as complement including PVP melee combat, clan battle, guild war, tower defense style dungeons, avatar competition, etc. We devoted great efforts to realize smooth operations on phones/pads' touch screen, and to increase connections between players through in-game online chat/share/competition system. There, basically, the game core mechanism is largely different from PC console games. There is similarity between generic games since world view of game developers, and graphic style or compositions are easily influenced by other successful generic games. But what decides whether a game is of fun or not ultimately depends on many things mainly like its basic framework, gameplay and game control. Here we do hope people can at least trial run our game for once before giving comments, good or bad ones all welcomed.

We do note that the recent controversial discussions about Armed Heroes Online had brought harm to our company's reputation and worse got our players confused and upset, which is not what we expect to see. As a professional game developer, EGLS has been always dedicating our every effort to bring out better game experience for our players. Players always come first. There, we prefer to modify some parts of Armed Heroes Online where have caused those disputes rather than go on arguing. As long as this carves out a way out of angry disputes, it will be definitely worth our efforts.

At last, we want to make clear, if necessary, that we would like to submit the documents, files and other materials related to the game developing to Apple to prove the originalities of the game and the efforts we devoted into the game developing.