Limbo of the Lost music not stolen, claims composer
Game's alleged plagiarism doesn't extend to the tunes
The composer of the music used in controversial adventure game Limbo of the Lost has confirmed that his music was used within the title legitimately.
In an email to Register Hardware, Germany-based freelance composer Marko Hautamäki said: "I composed all the game level background music you hear in the game itself, as well as in most of the animated features included on the bonus DVD. My music was also used in many of the game trailers and features.
"I can 100 per cent guarantee [the legitimacy of] everything I was involved in, and I have the original project files to prove that," he added.
While Hautamäki is understandably unable to confirm whether other music and sounds used in the game were included with the permission of their respective composer or composers, he did tell us that "Majestic Studios project leader Steve Bovis has assured me that there isn't any stolen music in the game".
Earlier this week, we reported how website GamePlasma spotted marked similarities between Limbo of the Lost's static backdrops and locations presented by a number of other games, in particular Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.


Limbo of the Lost (top) and Painkiller
Images courtesy GamesRadar
Gamers soon added to the list, pointing out alleged appearances of art from Painkiller, Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament 2004 and others in Limbo of the Lost.
Regarding the claimed graphical plagiarism, Hautamäki said: "I hope there will be some explanation to that from Majestic Studios. At the moment, they are the only ones who know how or why this happened."
Indeed, it has been suggested that Majestic outsourced the art production just as it did the music, and may have included what appears to be other games' content in ignorance. As yet, however, Majestic has not responded to the controversy.
Hautamäki, who was credited in the game's PDF manual, told us he "worked on the music for the Limbo of the Lost game from May 2006 to December 2006 as an outsourcer", stressing that he was "never a part of Majestic Studios core team".
COMMENTS
Wow.
I just finished scouring the corners of the internet to find information about this controversy, and what I found was hilarious, shocking, and mind-numbing.
Steve Bovis even goes as far as to pretend to be a beta-tester AND his daughter in forums. You can tell it's him because of the excessive "..................." and "hahahahahaha" remarks found in posts.
For a good archive of every game he stole from, including side-by-side comparisons:
http://lotl.wikia.com
Seems he's been stealing since 1995.
And dear god, watch the ending movie.
As far as I am aware
Ignorance is not a defense when you have broken the law.
It would be unfair to sue them if ..
They included the graphics in ignorance of the plagarism. For now I think its safe to say the only thing to do is wait. Surely the developers would have known they were going to get caught if they did this.. so It seems more likely to me that they just got blindsided by a lazy out sourced contractor. I say wait and see. If it was outsourced then it will be easy to produce contracts to that effect.
Well that is good to know :)
Perhaps, that was the game concept, a game about other games. A player locked, and lost in a game world.
Who knows, but of course copyright exists, and I don't think they are going to get away with fair usage here.
Is anyone going to sue for copyright infringement?
I am wondering if....
...all these games outsourced to the same graphics house, which started to get lazy :-D
