In the ruthless world of gaming where creativity is king, there's little tolerance for copycats - especially for those that fail to meet the industry's ever-rising standards. The latest example is Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival, a Nintendo Switch-exclusive budget game that's no longer on the platform's eShop after going viral for its stark similarity to The Last of Us, one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
An uncanny resemblance to Naughty Dog's acclaimed post-apocalyptic game earned it immediate notoriety online, which got worse after the game's trailer featured its own Ellie-like character and a gruff father figure like Joel.
Naturally, this ignited a firestorm of criticism and negative reviews. The worst part is that players discovered that the game was plagued with bugs and its entirety was a pitiful 15 to 20 minutes long. Many dubbed it the worst game in recent years. As if this fall from grace wasn't enough, Sony, evidently unimpressed, sprang into action, taking down the trailers and other promotional material for The Last Hope off to eh face of the internet as well as from the Nintendo Switch eShop in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
No official statements have been made by PlayStation, Nintendo, or V.G. Games - the developer behind the ill-fated title - thus, we can't definitively conclude whether the purge was triggered by Sony's copyright claims, self-preservation on Nintendo's part, or a preemptive strike by the developers.