The team behind indie hit Peak would rather its community pirate its own game, than play a “microtransaction-riddled” ripoff that has appeared on Roblox.
The Roblox ripoff in question is Cliff, a release that describes itself as a “challenging climbing game where even the smallest mistake can be your downfall”. So far, so Peak.
According to the blurb, Cliff players will find themselves “trapped on a mysterious island”, and the only way to escape from said island is to reach the top of the “towering” cliff. “Do you have the skill and courage to make it to the summit?” Cliff asks. The creator – PewStudio – does credit Peak as Cliff’s inspiration, but this seems to be veering much closer towards imitation territory.
Not only does Roblox’s Cliff sound pretty much identical to Peak, but its artwork is also alarmingly similar. You can check out the artwork for Cliff below.
Now compare that with the artwork for Peak, and you can see how this homage is not an homage, but basically a copy and paste effort.
Then, we get to the gameplay itself. I’ve just watched some Cliff videos on YouTube, and again we are well into blatant copying. Both games have an airport as its lobby area (see images below), both games have first person views for climbing, both games have a stamina bar that works in the exact same way…
To quote our own video whizz Alix Attenborough, who I have been chatting with as I write this story up: “If you showed someone this [Cliff] and Peak, they would think they are the same game.”
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Unsurprisingly, the Peak team isn’t flattered by the arrival of Cliff, and has asked its players not to even entertain the Roblox “ripoff”, branding it “microtransaction-riddled… slop”. Writing on social media platform X, the Peak team said it would frankly rather people “pirate our game” than even touch Cliff.
Now, to be fair, there are many titles which have appeared on Roblox over the years that have been inspired by others that came before. The platform holds a plethora of horror games, which clearly take a lot of their ideas from the likes of Five Nights at Freddy’s or similar. However, in the case of Cliff, it really does seem like the creator has lifted everything from Peak, and ported it onto the platform, adding none of its own ideas or originality.
Eurogamer has asked the developers behind Peak for further comment on Cliff, and reaction to its presence on Roblox.
Elsewhere in Peak news, last month the developers added cannibalism as a feature. Yes, cannibalism. You can now eat your friends…
