Alleged Torchlight copycat Armed Heroes taken down from App Store

Earlier this week, we reported on a case of copycatting in the Canadian app store.

The Chinese-based EGLS allegedly took most of the audio and visual assets from Runic Games's Torchlight and tried to pass them off as their own in the newly-launched Armed Heroes Online.

Runic noticed, and was singularly unamused.

Since calling EGLS out on Twitter and filing a takedown order with Apple, Runic has continued to insist that EGLS stole their Torchlight assets while EGLS has denied these allegations, stating that their game was merely inspired by Runic's game.

In an interview with Joystiq, Runic's president Travis Baldree noted exactly how creative EGLS was with their use of the word 'inspired':

"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,"

EGLS responded to Runic’s continued pressure by way of a press release that claims they did nothing wrong:

"Players always come first. There[sic], 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."

If Baldree is correct in his assertion that the audio manifests of Armed Heroes Online are identical to those of Torchlight, it is difficult to see how EGLS plans to convince Apple that their game was not based on a theft of assets.

In the meantime, Armed Heroes has been taking down from the App Store for the modifications.