While we cast our own shade in the direction of Fortnite and the recently introduced Impostors mode, with its barely veiled copycatting of Among Us, the mode’s striking similarities to the game has also become a talking point for Innersloth, the indie dev studio of the multiplayer deceive-em-up.
Several members of the Innersloth team took to Twitter to call out Epic Games’ new mode. Victoria Tran, community director for the game, writes, “It would’ve been really, really cool to collab haha. Like game mechanics fine, those shouldn’t be gatekept, but at the very least even different themes or terminology makes things more interesting?”
Other devs were feeling a bit less diplomatic. Lead Unity programmer Adriel Wallick shared a comic about art theft and then opined, “Everything in the world was already feeling insurmountable, so this was just another fun reminder of how tiny we all really are,” while Unity programmer Gary Porter calls attention to some map similarities while lancing Epic. “I haven’t been tweeting much recently because I’ve been working so hard on upcoming content for Among Us. So it feels weird to be compelled to tweet again because of stuff like this,” he writes. “It’s okay tho they flipped electrical and medbay and connected security to the cafeteria.”
The matter has even drawn out Innersloth co-founder Marcus Bromander, who references how the idea behind Among Us wasn’t wholly original as it was an adaptation of the party game Werewolf but notes the difference between iteration and the bare minimum of adaptation. “We didn’t patent the Among Us mechanics. I don’t think that leads to a healthy game industry,” he writes. “Is it really that hard to put 10% more effort into putting your own spin on it though?”
