Fabulous investigating after Devolver Digital accuses its app of ripping off Gris

The makers of the self-help app Fabulous say they are looking into a video created a few months back that, as pointed out by publisher Devolver Digital earlier today, bore similarities to Nomada Studio’s 2018 game Gris.

Devolver shared the public accusation in a tweet earlier today that has, at the time of writing, already jumped past 1,500 retweets.

In that post, Devolver offers the situation with Gris and Fabulous as a warning for other indie developers out there, alongside a video showing moments from the game alongside unmistakably similar scenes and animations from Fabulous app.

“The Fabulous app (@GetTheFabulous) ripped off Gris and is [a] reminder to all devs to be mindful of big companies and brands stealing creative work from smaller studios,” reads the tweet.

Speaking over email, Fabulous CEO Sami Ben Hassine told Gamasutra that wrongdoing from its side was unintentional, and that it is in communication with Devolver Digital to work through the situation. Hassine says that the video has since been taken down and notes that the team behind the app is a small start-up of around 20 people.

“Fabulous has a mission to help people lead healthier lives, and we started this 5 years ago. From the very beginning, and as we are gamers ourselves, we were inspired by games like Journey, Monument Valley, and books like the Little Prince or The Alchemist, to create our universe,” explained Hassine over email.

“We have a team of 2 artists and freelancers, and that video was created a few months ago. We're still investigating this as all of this has been sudden, but any wrongdoing from our side is not intentional. It might be that one of our artists or freelancers got inspired by a game that they liked.”

We've reached out to Devolver Digital for additional comment and will update this story following a reply.