A recently released RC helicopter game on PlayStation 4 was a clear rip off one of Grand Theft Auto Vice City’s worst and most infamous missions. Days after its release, it’s already been yanked from the store as it seems Take-Two Interactive noticed just how similar it was to the original game.
Developed and published by ERIK GAMES, HeliCity Demolition Man was released on August 30 for the PS4 as a digital-only game. The game cost $2 and was very short according to folks who played it, making for an easy Platinum Trophy. The entire game was essentially an unlicensed remake of Vice City’s infamous “Demolition Man” mission which saw Tommy Vercetti flying an RC helicopter around a building and using it to plant explosives. And guess what the objective of HeliCity Demolition Man is? Yeah, it’s planting bombs around a building using an RC heli.
I’d include a trailer for the game here, but that was yanked from YouTube due to a copyright complaint from Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two Interactive. Instead, here’s a video uploaded by someone else showing off HeliCity Demolition Man.
It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that this game has since been removed from the PlayStation Store. Kotaku has contacted Take-Two Interactive about the game and its removal.
HeliCity isn’t even pretending to be anything other than a Vice City knockoff. From the HUD to the sound effects to even the look of the world, everything is clearly inspired by or directly ripped from Vice City. The area around the building is also a clear copy of that same part of Vice City.
While it’s hard to believe someone would develop this game and try to release it on PlayStation, it’s harder to wrap my head around how Sony even let this game make it through the certification process at all. Are there humans looking at these games before they get uploaded to the PSN store? It doesn’t seem like it.
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