As forum user "Blue Force" notes in the german Elex discussion, the author of a graphic novel called "Rustwalker" claims on Twitter that Piranha Bytes has stolen ideas from his graphic novel on a large scale:

It is very clear that @Elex_Game completely stole my idea, right down to the factions, the mutations, the post-apoc land, etc. I had posted all of those story details on my website in 2013. Two years later and @Elex_Game began developing my story, with slight tweaks.

And indeed, when reading on the related website, quickly some parallels between Elex and "Rustwalker" become apparent. The graphic novel by the Canadian author Derek Hall has not yet been released, but many details have already been presented on the Internet in 2013. Both stories are about an apocalyptic event that came down from the sky, changing the planet and the people forever - in both good and bad ways. As a result, four factions emerged, which are more or less similar in "Rustwalker" and Elex.

There are, however, much bigger differences than the author's angry tweets suggest at the beginning: the characters, countless details of the world and the scenario are different - and no sexy cat people have been mentioned by Piranha Bytes either. The differences are by no means only "slight tweaks", as the author asserts.

In our view, the similarities between Elex and "Rustwalker" are simply a product of coincidence, especially as, on closer inspection, more and more differences become obvious. For things like an apocalypse, a resulting change in the environment, and the formation of factions that correspond to archetypes such as "nature", "technology", etc., are by no means so original that they can only be the product of plagiarism in Elex, quite to the contrary. Especially since Piranha Bytes hardly needs to steal the ideas of others. Rather, what we have at hand is the situation that different people simply had similar ideas independently of each other - but nothing more.

What do you think about this? Let us know in the forum!