How come id Software / Bethesda have never sued Bungie / Microsoft over the similarity between Doomguy and Master Chief?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨MacNCheezus@lemmy.today⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/458ca217-5398-40b1-a740-fde4c97c3b6c.jpeg

They look so damn similar, from the style and color of their armor down to their behavioral traits. Seems like Bungie simply saw the success that Doom had over their Marathon series and thought to themselves “you know what our next game needs? A massively overpowered super soldier in green high tech armor who spouts sarcastic one liners in the face of an overwhelming alien invasion” and went to town with that concept. And it worked like a charm, they cranked out six massively successful games before id/Bethesda decided it was time to reboot the Doom franchise 2016.

Perhaps it was payback for them to give Doomguy the Crucible in the reboot games (which looks a lot like the energy sword from Halo), but I can’t help but think these two are essentially the same character.

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Comments

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Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They’re both “generic future soldier guy.”

They’re still distinct enough that no one would confuse them.
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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  They’re still distinct enough that no one would confuse them.
  
  I’ve only played the original doom, from the early 90s. In that gsme your only view of your character is a little head in the hud. This head does not have armor on. You only see a human face. The promo/box shows the armor, so I’m not saying he isn’t wearing it. I’m just saying you don’t see yourself in game wearing it.
  
  I’ve never played halo.
  
  All that being said, the photo in this post shows both master chief and doom guy. I have no idea which is which. 50/50 chance I get it right.
  
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  - Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I’ve only played the original doom, from the early 90s. In that gsme your only view of your character is a little head in the hud
    
    You never played multiplayer? You never saw the dead Marines in the first level? You didn’t see the box art for the game and the intro menu?
    
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- gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah I was going to point out #3.
  
  I bet that halo took the original space marine doomguy armor and modernized it, then doom later realized but didn’t have a way out since halo had become so successful.
  
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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It wasn’t necessary for both to be green. Master Chief could’ve had a blue (or a red, or a silver armor) and he’d still be the same.
  
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  - CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Green is the universal color of soldiers. The regular soldiers in Halo were wearing green. Master Chief’s armor was green because he was a soldier. It made perfect sense to me.
    
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  - BigPotato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    John Halo and the Marines are Marines and not Soldiers. Though, I’m not certain Halo ever shows a non-Navy Servicemember in 1-4.
    
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- TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  About point 2: I would argue that you could convince any judge that these characters are sufficiently distinct in the legal sense. IRL, people might still confuse them, but that’s not the point here. Just look at some of the competing car designs to get a feel for what is legally distinct enough these days. You can come up with a cartoon character, car or a sci-fi warrior that copies over 90% from something else, and you can still get away with it.
  
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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why would they? Getting inspiration or doing something similar to something that already exist is not illegal. And it shouldn’t be. All art is derivative, and that’s ok.

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dan1101@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Doom guy (from Doom 1 and 2) is derivative of Ash from Army of Darkness, down to the facial expressions, the chainsaw, and the shotgun.

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- hakunawazo@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Image
  
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Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
For the same reason that two boring white dudes can star in two different movies in the same year about the White House being taken over by terrorists

Because similar isn’t the same. As long as they can argue that specifics are different enough, that’s all that matters.

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StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Originally doom guy was just a face at the bottom of the HUD that grunted and got bloody as you took hits. The only images of him I remember was just a marine in green combat armor, not too dissimilar to modern real world combat armor, standing on a pile of dead demons and zombies(1993) and the 3rd person cinematics from Doom 3 (early 2000s ish?) where again he looked just like a normal human marine.

Halo come around in the mid 2000’s and Master Chief was never shown outside his armor or with his helmet off. Outside the TV show I’m not sure if that is still the case.

Not sure when the modern images of doom guy came about but I think it was around 2015. Probably not earlier.

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- fartsparkles@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  For those of us who played Doom multiplayer over a network back in the 90s (the OG “Deathmatch”), you were very familiar with Doomguy(s): Image
  
  Not to mention the iconic box art: Image
  
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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s a good point. I mean Doomguy WAS very clearly visible on the box art wearing a green outfit and a gray helmet, but the outfit appears to be made of cloth rather than steel, and he looks more like a football player than anything.
  
  Image
  
  His modern appearance in full power armor was indeed only introduced with the 2016 reboot.
  
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- n3m37h@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Halo 1 was released in 2001, doom 3 was 2004 current doom was 2015.
  
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AlexisBlackbird@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I reckon it’s way too generic to sue over

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Smoolak@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
An argument I didn’t see here: Bethesda has been owned by Microsoft since 2021. It’s likely that Microsoft had plans to buy the company since many years before.

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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Possible, but in that case it might have actually helped them to first tie them up in a difficult and potentially expensive lawsuit in order to lower the purchase price. Sounds like something Microsoft would do…
  
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fubo@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Marathon’s Security Officer already had the green armor and shiny mask.

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andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Early video game copyright history was also a lot more loosy goosie. Bethesda cut its teeth on Terminator licensed games, because no one really cared about video games and corpus would give away licensing rights for a song.

If you look at early gaming history, there’s a lot of stuff that wouldn’t fly today copyright wise. (Iirc Nethack has enemies from Tron, folks very happily made and distributed Star Trek fan games - heck, in the early 00’s you could buy unofficial mod packs for video games in stores.)

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- HiTekRedNek@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  LOAD “TREK64”,8 RUN
  
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Krudler@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m not sure but I’m sharing this for interest sake

Fighter’s History vs. Street Fighter II Character Comparison - Lawsuit Exhibit

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- pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  In spite of the intentional similarities between the two games, the court concluded that Data East did not infringe upon Capcom’s copyright, as most of these similarities were not protected under copyright.
  
  Capcom vs Data East
  
  So 100% guilty of being a blatant copy, but not illegal.
  
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  - Krudler@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This is not Guile… Cut to throwing sonic boom
    
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ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Games workshop would then have to use both of them. Space marines pre-date both of them.

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- GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I mean, can you really put a patent on the idea of an astronaut suit for space soldiers? That seems way too generic.
  
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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  But they generally have blue and gold armor, no?
  
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  - Kirca@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The “poster boys” are the Ultramarines, who rock the blue and gold, but there are a tonne of different chapters with individual colour schemes.
    
    In saying that I don’t there are really any super popular ones rocking green at the time (probably were, but I don’t recall any)
    
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