Hoyoverse, the makers of popular gacha games including Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, has previously been accused of copying games from other developers. Now, in a video posted on Bluesky, game designer Michal Kamm claims that a minigame featured in Zenless Zone Zero bears more than a little resemblance to his game Ouros.
The video shows off the close similarities between the two games. Kamm explained that in Ouros, you manipulate a track so that a moving ball intersects with numbered targets in order. The targets are arranged in all kinds of trippy configurations, causing the player to bend and stretch the track into unique shapes to win. Kamm’s video also featured a quick look at the minigame in Zenless Zone Zero which he claims is modeled on Ouros, and which also involves bending a track around numbered targets.
According to Kamm, the similarities between the two games don’t end at gameplay mechanics. The Zenless Zone Zero version features other design elements also present in Ouros, including portals that teleport the ball to the start of the track, a button to reverse the ball’s direction, and a hint system that shows the intended shape of the track. Kamm noted that he released Ouros in 2024, while the ZZZ version came out during a limited-time event last year.
Hoyoverse has previously been accused of copying by another indie dev, this time for a minigame featured in Genshin Impact. In a post on the r/indiegaming subreddit last month, developers claimed Hoyoverse copied elements from the demo of their cartography game Map Map – A Game About Maps. In the clip shared to Reddit, it looks like both games use a map marker falling from the sky in response to picking out a point on a map.
It’s not unusual to see games riffing off one another. Hoyoverse games in particular feature minigames that are pastiches of the stuff you’d see in Fall Guys or Vampire Survivors. But Zenless Zone Zero and Genshin Impact are two titles in Hoyoverse’s stable of billion-dollar-generating gacha games that each have legions of fans ready to go to war on their behalf. Reactions to these allegations from Hoyoverse fans on social media range from antipathy to outright hostility at the developers. Some have suggested that even if Hoyoverse did some swiping in these cases, it’s okay because the impacted developers can use this as a marketing opportunity. In addition to the general suckage of having something he made attributed to someone else, Kamm said that the reason he created the video outlining the similarities at all was because he was getting comments from Hoyoverse fans claiming that Ouros copied ZZZ.
Kotaku has reached out to Kamm and Hoyoverse for comment. Meanwhile, Ouros has a very positive rating on Steam with a little less than 250 reviews while Map Map has a demo you can play now.