It's been adjudicated before: you can't. It's the reason PUBG and Fortnite can coexist even though Epic completely ripped off PUBG after helping develop the game. It's also why the "DOOM clone" genre was allowed to proliferate into the FPS genre, why there are so many FNAF-inspired games, and why Nintendo recently lost one of its Pokémon patents. You don't own the concept of the Milgram experiment, you don't own the trademark for the name, and the overall gameplay concept is not subject to copyright. Unless you can prove that the other developer stole code or art assets from you, or that it violated a trademark or patent that you own, there's nothing you can do but hope that the better product wins in the end.

I guess it's too late to change the name of the game, but when you think about it, the "clone" is a shitty game that won't get a lot of downloads if any. I'm only a gamer, but your whole Steam page is way more enticing.

You could create a small website with links to the Steam page (and Bluesky and Twitter...) as a reference. The other guy won't waste more time on his project. I saw your Posts history on Lemmy, and you have a lot of upvotes and conversations about that game, it's something that the clone guy cannot reproduce easily, he would be roasted very fast if he tried that.

You named your game after a well known psychological experiment and now you're surprised someone else used the name and generalized gameplay related to said experiment? Not trying to be that guy but brother, what were you expecting? Did you have another in the tank called The Stanford Prison Experiment? The Rorschach Test maybe? Kinda comes with the territory I would think.

But for real, just call it Milgram. Conveys the same thing, no crossover with duplicate, I think it would show up first in a search on steam as well.

Unless you trademark the title you can’t do anything about it. And an international trademark cost a lot of money.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The copy doesn’t look like a game that can compete. It looks very barebones. The Steam algorithm will bury this game because it won’t sell. You probably gave this game more publicity than it ever got before. Just focus on your own game the more wishlists you get the more the algorithm will push your game to customers and they will never see the copy.

I'm certainly sorry for your troubles but I'm not really seeing anything here compelling as to the idea of them purposely stealing something from you. It's two games based on an actual scientific experiment. So of course the name is going to be the same cuz the name is based on the experiment. Of course the descriptions going to be similar because you're describing the same experiment. The games themselves seem different enough that I have trouble believing you could convince anyone of theft here, particularly anyone at Steam.

There are a lot of games out there that are very similar. It's just the nature of the thing. I agree with some other comments in here I think your best choice is to just change the name, maybe to something a little bit more memorable and original and rely on the fact that your product does look better. Certainly file an official Complaint if you feel it necessary, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

You'll need to add onto your tile, to distinguish it from the rip-off version, so people know.

And, doing what you're doing here, getting the word out.

You'll be fine.

https://steamcommunity.com/dmca/create

But be warned that it might tie up both games in bureaucracy. You might hope that steam has the timestamps readily available to prove the sequence of events - though I'm a bit skeptical of cloud storage about that stuff. So you might want your own evidence from your own storage.

It'd be good to try to find someone who has gone through it on steam, and of course a lawyer, if you can afford it.

You didn't come up with the name and it's perfectly realistic to imagine more than 1 person coming up with a similar idea based on the same concept. Even if someone "stole" your idea - do it better than them and you'll have nothing to worry about. I'd be more understanding of your concern if a big AAA studio happened to make this release so close to yours, but even then not much you can do due to aforementioned reasons. And while Steam lets you use any name you want, even if it's already taken, it will put your game first on the search list if more people interact with it, which will naturally happen if your game is good.

Make it easy on yourself

Find a new name for your game

I wish listed your game, I've been following it for some time, looks a lot better than the copy. I don't think that copy will sell as much, and if you keep promoting and talking about it the way you already are, I think it'd be clear which one is the rip off.

I think it'd be a good idea to give keys to some streamers to show the game. I might tell a few steamers to stream this, it seems like it would be fun to do this with an audience.

Happened to bigger outfits. There is this board game "Settlers of Catan", which should have been "Settlers" originally, until a computer game of that name got released just before they launched.

Yours looks way better, one small criticism that may be easy to adjust but could also just be the visual style you want: most surfaces look way too glossy and reflective.

While it's nice to have detailed reflections, things like the wall tiles just seem nearly like mirrors when it comes to light reflections. There's no diffusion. Maybe the face masks could stay as glossy, but I would diffuse/dull the rest a bit. The ceramic tile but especially the padded room. Padded room tiles would be fabric so there really shouldn't be any gloss and very little reflection.

I hope you don't take that the wrong way, and I think your game will stand out as far superior to the copy

I added yours to my wishlist, though I don’t intend to play it cause horror doesn’t sit well with me on account of how I’m a giant wuss but I still support artists, and I put theirs on my ignore list.

They may have done you a favour. The name just being the name of a famous experiment is not very SEO friendly. The less of your troubles is another game having the same name, you have thousands of references to that experiment to compete with for name placement.

I wish listed yours so hopefully that helps the algorithm a tiny little bit

I have played the demo for your game, and while I don't know if you can fight this, you'll deffo be getting at least one sale!

All I know is yours actually looks good. Theirs feels like one of those minis where it has 1/10th the heart and the whole fascist democracy ‘be a good citizen’ thing in theirs is trying to tap into something helldivers made popular for a surge and didn’t even do well. I’ll be getting your game when it drops if I can, but theirs isn’t interesting.

I had no idea two steam apps could have the same name. It does make sense though, you pay for an app for every prototype and not all prototypes make it to development. There would be a lot of wasted names. I wonder that if you apply for an IARC rating first, it will block them. Dm me if you want to know the no cost, zero effort way to do it.

You could maybe make a trademark complaint against them if you have been using the name of your game publically before they have, which from your steam page already existing I would assume you've been using it publicly for at least a little while now. As to how you would go about making such a complaint, I don't know what to do other than talking with a lawyer if Steam doesn't have any sort of option. This all assumes you live in the USA, if you're in another country different options may or may not exist.

Maybe you can rename your game to something like "Obey him : The Milgram Experiment". Not the other way round because then it looks like a sequel to the other game

Your game looks considerably better.

I would not want my work to be confused with another's.

Even so, a non-litigious option is to contact the dev to propose a bundle.

The "Experiments" Bundle?

Not a dev or lawyer, zero experience. But don't undervalue word-of-mouth! That's something they can never copy. Sure, some people might buy the asset flips/copies, and hopefully they'll get refunds. But if your game is popular and liked and well-reviewed and supported, it'll drown out the noise and rise above it all... Good luck!

I'm excited to play your game, not some shitty clone. I've seen this happen with another indie horror game that I can't remember the name of. I don't have a solution unfortunately. As long as yours comes up first in search than you shouldn't have anything to worry about anyway.

Let me just say your game looks awesome and I look forward to its release.

I think you should report it to steam, you've surely had a page with that name for longer. I wouldn't change your game name now

I'm surprised that it's allowed to have 2 games with the same name on steam (I guess their Steam IDs aee different). I wonder how steam handles their directories in the /steams/common folder if they have the same root folder name.

See if anyone else in the game dev community has experienced this kind of thing before. If it turns out to be a consistent problem then you could try to get a games journalist involved and see if they will write a story. In order to get anything done about it, you have to make enough noise that it comes to the attention of the people who can actually effect a change.

I'm not sure what the solution is though, because when the base concept is already in the public domain, it's probably something that happens sometimes through pure coincidence. Like the ant movies. Steam would have to have a set of criteria by which they judge if someone is doing it deliberately and maliciously in order to classify it as fraud or impersonation. If it's a big enough problem and happens regularly, maybe they would consider it though.

are you not able to claim copyright by contacting steam?