7 Days to Die pulled from Steam over appropriated Tripwire assets

The Fun Pimps Entertainment's 7 Days to Die, a first-person survival horror game, has been pulled from Steam Greenlight following a DMCA notice from Tripwire Interactive, alleging the game directly appropriates assets from its title Killing Floor. The infringement was first noticed during 7 Days to Die's Kickstarter campaign back in August, in which alpha footage of the game depicted an enemy model apparently lifted in its entirety from Killing Floor (shown above). Tripwire sourced the stolen asset to an illegally ripped model placed on the Unity asset store, which has since been removed and seen its uploader banned. However, although directly contacted by Tripwire about the issue, 7 Days to Die developer The Fun Pimps was slow in removing the offending assets, prompting Tripwire to pursue legal action. "It would only take them an hour or so to replace the model and edit the videos. But [after multiple contacts], nothing," said games industry attorney Tom Buscaglia, engaged on behalf of Tripwire. "The guys at The Fun Pimps are not rookies and should know better... Tripwire is appropriately aggressive about protecting their IP." On the 7 Days to Die forums, a Fun Pimps representative acknowledged the DMCA takedown and said: "We're working to sort this out and are actively dealing with the lawyers and such to have the issue resolved... We'll be releasing an update with the asset remove (sic) soon."