If something is popular, you can all but guarantee there is going to be a bootleg produced to make some extra pennies, copyright be damned. Whether it’s the shoddily produced Minions merchandise seen down at the local market or laughably cheap films thrown straight onto big streaming services, the brightest creative sparks will always be replicated to their detriment.
The Last of Us is no exception. Without mentioning how the original game is more or less a loose adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Naughty Dog changed the gaming world with its 2013 masterpiece. So much so that even ten years later, smaller developers are still creating barbaric copycats at bargain prices to fool some poor gamers that it’s actually more than a hollow asset flip thrown together in a matter of days on a shoestring budget. The only reason for these games to exist is to trick consumers into spending money, and then the cycle repeats itself.
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Except this time, we’ve decided to stand up and take notice for some reason. Our own Tessa Kaur wrote about this phenomenon in recent weeks, touching on how the Nintendo eShop is flooded with similar piles of garbage ripping off established properties. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have little oversight on their digital storefronts and will let almost any game call it home so long as they’re paying the proper fees and jumping through the correct hoops. It seems this even counts for games which are also a blatant breach of copyright.
Calling these games out and taking them to task with the hope that parent companies will actually bother to curate their online storefronts is one thing, but to ever consider treating The Last Hope as a serious game is not only a hopeless endeavour, but a foolish one. It’s currently one of the top sellers on the eShop, which means enough of us are picking it up thanks to a morbid sense of curiosity likely spurred forth by headlines dragging this game because it exists. Chances are the developer knows it’s a garbage rip-off, especially when you look at its other releases, so it’s making money here and losing very little as a result.
Digital Foundry even ran a full analysis on the game’s technical shortcomings and how it is one of the year’s worst games, stating the obvious and putting thousands of eyes on a title which doesn’t deserve any attention that isn’t intended to have it removed from sale entirely. It costs 99p because that price is low enough for us to go ‘Surely it can’t be that bad?’ as we pick it up to take a look. Yes, it is that bad, and the thousands of people with similar thoughts have just made this dirtbag developer a lot of money. The trailer is a lie and so is the game it claims to promote, and beyond labelling it as such we only help the bootleg’s bottom line.
As a society, we take pleasure in dragging terrible things, or positioning ourselves in a place of superiority because we’re intelligent enough to notice something like The Last Hope and drag it for being the piece of garbage it very clearly is. I can’t help but feel this energy could be used to criticise the right aspects of our industry or instead shine a light on indie darlings in dire need of a second chance. The Last of Hope is going to fade into memory before we know it, and we’d be best to forget it and focus on more important things in video games.
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