Among Ushas become the type of viral success that few games will ever achieve. It penetrated pop culture in a way that perhaps only a single other game has in recent memory, that game beingFortnite. The two games are wildly different, however, so they typically occupy different spaces in the video game discourse. At least, they did untilFortniteannounced its new Impostors mode, which is so near-identical toAmong Usthat event Innersloth’s devs aren’t comfortable with what Epic Games has done.
Innersloth community director Victoria Tran offered up a succinct description of how it felt to wake up and find Epic was adding anAmong Usmode toFortnite. In her first tweet, Tran says that “it would have been really, really cool to collab” making clear that the idea ofAmong Uscrossing over toFortniteisn’t the problem. Rather, it’s that Epic has gone forward without contacting Innersloth at all. Further, Tran describes how Epic Games hasn’t just takenAmong Us' game mechanics, which she says is “fine,” but also usesAmong Us'“different themes” and “terminology.”
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Tran elaborates on her feelings in a follow-up tweet, explaining that this kind of decision by ahuge company like Epic Gamesleaves her, as an indie dev, feeling “powerless.” She says it gives her a feeling of “lol what’s the point anymore” regarding making stories and content, if a big company like Epic will just add something identical toFortnitewithout attribution or recompense. Tran adds that “it feels exactly like being a woman/POC in tech.”
But Tran isn’t the only person at Innersloth willing to make a public statement aboutFortnite’s Impostors mode. Innersloth programmer Gary Porter also made a post on Twitter, though they took a different approach. Porter posted a map comparison betweenAmong Us' map The Skeld andFortnite’s Impostors map, named Loop Control. His point is that the two maps are uniquely similar, though as Porter says, “It’s okay tho they flipped electrical and medbay and connected security to the cafeteria.”
Needless to say,Fortnite’s announcement of its Impostors mode has clearly become a topic of conversation atInnersloth. Most ofAmong Us' devs haven’t shared their thoughts. Others are trying to take it in stride, like animator Jake Clark who posted a meme whereFortnite’s Impostors teaser had its characters painted over and rebranded as “amogus.”
It’s easy to see why Innersloth would be frustrated with the situation. There’s a difference between creating anAmong Us-inspiredsocial deductiongame mode and what looks to be a very obvious recreation ofAmong Usitself. But Innersloth is a small team and Epic Games has a very expensive legal team. There’s no real recourse available to Innersloth outside of calling attention to the issue. Epic, of course, has yet to respond.
Among Usis available now on PC, Switch, and mobile devices. PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S versions are in development.
