Webfishing & Rift Fishing

[maidmage]

A new game called Rift Fishing (https://x.com/nexindie/status/1997520632955691462?s=20) has appeared on the steam store which is pretty similar to Web Fishing in a lot of ways. It’s clearly designed to scratch the same itch that webfishing left behind, which has kind of got me thinking about a bunch of different things.

for those that dont know, webfishing was a viral (like over 50k english steam reviews) cozy game where you could join a simple lobby with some friends and fish, draw, and do some other basic emotes with an animal crossing style. it was a virtual hangout space, kind of like what you wouldve gotten out of early 2010s roblox or some non-combat focused mmos. but at some point the dev got doxxed, and they’ve been radio silent since the beginning of this year and havent been updating the game anymore as well.

it makes sense that another animal crossing style chatroom fishing game would come out. this wouldve happened whether or not what happened to the developer happened. but because of the circumstances i think it still leaves a bit of a weird taste. because of what happened to the webfishing dev, i think some people are taking this personally. the original developer was doxxed because of webfishings success, so it feels strange for a new developer to appear and replace the game. but that’s just business, isn’t it?

Some people are calling out plagiarism, which, maybe could apply here. The game is insanely similar on a lot of fronts and appears to be implementing all the same features that webfishing had. Stylistically, i don’t think its fair to call that plagiarism. They’re both riffing on animal crossing’s playbook. I don’t think either of them have a claim to it. I’m also fairly anti-copyright, because I don’t like where that ends. Who decides when a game looks too similar to another game? How does that get enforced? Do we start patenting game mechanics? I thought we all left this behind by now.

But ignoring that side of things, I do think its reasonable that the people who like webfishing would want a new game, something with more updates and a fresh coat of paint. If someone’s willing to step up and sell an alternative, that’s just the free market right?

I do feel a bit weird about this constant update-cycle desire in modern consumers though. Games used to be finished once they were sold, but now everything’s moved to live service. Webfishing was a simple $5 game, do we really need that to get updates till the end of time? Infinitely more cosmetics and new maps all paid for the same $5 from who knows how long ago? If we weren’t looking for constant updates, then the developer being doxxed off the internet wouldn’t be a problem for the consumer, but a problem for us emotionally.

Despite all of this i think its important to realize, the creator(s?) of rift fishing probably didn’t wish for the webfishing dev to have gotten hurt the way they did. we cant pin that blame on them, its just not fair. Like i said earlier, this game probably would’ve come out even if webfishing was still active, either by Rift Fishing, or some other developer. It does feel a little opportunist, but I don’t think its fair to say it really is opportunism.

To cap this off, Car/Garn47, who previously contributed a song to webfishing, asked the dev how they felt about Garn47 making a song for Rift Fishing, and according to them they got the green light. so it seems like regardless of what others are thinking, the webfishing dev supports rift fishing. and after all, isnt their opinion the one that holds the most weight here?

[generalred]

This is the first I come across this discourse so I’m not totally in-tune with the details aside from what you’ve presented here. Additionally, the only material I’ve seen of Rift Fishing is the Steam page. With my extra research though, I still have to agree with you.

I don’t think the arguments of plagiarism are being made entirely in good faith, or are ill-informed at best. Games, especially these small independent games, are a result of what came before it. They benefit from being able to pull from what was successful before. As you pointed out, both games are riffing off Animal Crossing, an insanely popular franchise. However, I don’t believe it’s entirely wrong that it’s trying to build atop the behavior of Webfishing either. Just look at all the games that successfully riffed off Lethal Company’s, REPO, PEAK, and RV There Yet for example. Nobody had a problem with those even though they clearly riff on similar mechanics while presenting their own twists and additions. This game has already shown several things that makes it arguably better, such as the host migration feature they heavily feature. On top of that, it looks like the major deviation is that it’s introducing an “expedition” mechanic; what that is remains to be seen. Regardless, I believe it will fall under that realm of building atop of what came before. That’s the bread-and-butter of indie game development. Generally, indie devs aren’t coming to build games from scratch within a vacuum of understanding.

To expand on your point about endless updates, Webfishing has long been feature-complete. There’s really no reason anybody should expect more updates, especially because it’s a $5 indie game as you pointed out. The doxxing situation doesn’t change that fact. Additionally, the Webfishing dev had already addressed a slow down in updates due to health issues in the 1.11 patch almost a year ago. These alone open the floor to newcomers coming in to expand on the places Webfishing didn’t.

I think the real difference here is mainly around the context of the Webfishing dev doxxing. Otherwise nobody would have batted an eye at somebody riffing on Webfishing. As you pointed out, it can seem in bad taste. However, there’s no reason to believe this was done with any malicious intent. The fact that Garn47 pointed out that the Webfishing dev supports this project just breaks it down further.

There’s no reason to disallow someone to riff on another game so long as they’re interpreting it within their own unique vision. I don’t think anything can justify that unless there’s some direct, provable malicious intent. I’m not sure anybody can state that here.