Did Control rip off The SCP Foundation?

We're talking about something that's gotten a little confusing in the Site 42 comments sections over the weekend. You see, over the course of this A24 SCP Foundation VHS movie scenario, we've been discussing, okay, well, what might they do? Are they going to adapt the SCP wiki proper? Are they going to use original stories and use the SCP as a framing device? Their recent statement said that this was going to be a tribute to SCP, which a lot of people thinking that they might be doing something filing the serial numbers off-ish. That's at least kind of where I'm leaning, but again, I don't know enough. They've been rather vague in their language. I would appreciate clarity. But when it comes to filing the serial numbers off, I've been using the game Control as an example because you look at the game Control and you have an SCP Foundation-like organization by a different name. Seems pretty cut and dry when it comes to what it would be like if someone wanted to make an SCP game and wanted to file the serial numbers off so that they could keep their copyrights. And possibly due to it not being the main subject I was talking about during this movie scenario, possibly because I used poor wording, some people have made the assumption the jump off that I think Control is a rip-off of SCP. That it is actively they wanted to make an SCP game and so they filed the serial numbers off. That is not my viewpoint. When you look into interviews with the developers of Control, Remedy Games, they speak on a litany of inspirations for SCP. And it's important to consider the blurry line between inspiration and theft sometimes, but if you take the ter- the care to combine multiple different things into their own thing, usually you can get away from theft and into inspiration, combination, making something new from separate parts. Good things that we like. In the article from IGN, Control the Books, TV shows and movies to check out before you play, IGN asked narrative designer Brooke Maggs to put together a new weird, as in the genre of urban fantasy, cosmic horror that SCP and Control both encompass, new weird on the internet. A new weird reading and watching this to help you get acclimated to the genre and learn the influences that Control is twisting to make its own new weird narrative. And so, the narrative designer for Control listed the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which by the way, House of Leaves, if you haven't read it, shame on you, feet. Go go do that. No one may ever have the same knowledge again, Letters to Mount Wilson Observatory, 1915 to 1935, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, Stalker, the movie, Twin Peaks, the TV series, Legion, the TV series, and The X-Files TV series. So, we notice that they did not cite SCP at all in this setting, but that doesn't mean that SCP wasn't an inspiration about Control. There are several interviews with the director of the game, Mikael Kasurinen, stated that SCP was one of many influences, not listed in that other one by the narrative designer, but it was listed among X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its snappy dialogue, which oh boy, we will never escape the Whedon dialogue, says someone who is actually a huge fan of Whedon Whedon dialogue, in case you can't tell. Uh I enjoy that kind of snappy larger-than-life banter. Uh Firefly, keep it shiny cast. In this same Kotaku article called The Creepypasta Community That Influenced Control, there is literally a interview with former SCP Wiki Licensing Staff Assistant I I think former? I don't know if Procy is still licensing staff or not. This has been a couple years since. But went on to state that it is very SCP-esque. Of course, everyone can see that. But you get to the end of the interview and straight-up says what a lot of the community, including myself, have to say, which is, and I quote, that they don't feel ripped off by Control whatsoever, and in fact feels like Remedy did their homework on how closely they could reference the outside sources without getting into legal trouble. Pierce handles licensing for the SCP Foundation, as well as community outreach, so he should know. But even if Control's ultimately its own thing to Pierce, it's also the best SCP Foundation game ever made. The SCP Foundation has other games based on the material, like SCP Containment Breach, made famous by the likes of YouTubers like Markiplier. But while Containment Breach may make explicit references to the fiction of the SCP Foundation, Control captures the tone that kept people like Procy, as well as a lot of us, coming back to the community. This urban fantasy vibe. This new weird, as they put it. Now, in the same vein, they go on to say something very similar to what I've said in the past, which is Well, what they said is I just had this warm fuzzy feeling throughout the game, seeing the cultural influence of something I've spent eight years of my life kind of doing as a hobby. In fairness, they clearly had the inspiration from us, but they took it in their own direction. They did something with it that we could not do in a thousand years. In my constant quote about this, the first time I sat down to play Control, walking through just the hallways and the metal detectors of the oldest house, I felt legitimate nostalgia for a place I had never been. Just someone as, "Hey, I feel like I'm at home in this dark, secret, horrifying facility." There's uh many other interviews that discuss the several links between Control and SCP, Control and multiple other forms of media. For instance, there is reference to a quote-unquote machine god in the game of Control, a likely reference to the Church of the Broken God. Of course, their DLC, one of them is literally called The Foundation. It's a bit on the nose, but I'm not going to argue. Uh many of the anomalies, objects of power that they contain, are riffs on the kind of anomalies that the SCP Foundation contains, including your thing you have to stare at so it doesn't kill you, the rubber ducks and the like. And one more thing I looked up just to clarify. I mentioned throughout the discussion this weekend that I heard at some point that Remedy wanted to thank the SCP Foundation in their credits for Control, but were dissuaded from doing so by their legal department. And for the life of me, I couldn't remember where I found that. And I did find a singular, rather unreliable source, which is a TV Tropes citation that does not actually link to anywhere where it says that. In the friendly fandoms trope of the your mileage may vary segment on the game Control on TV Tropes, the devs have even cited SCPs an inspiration. We did find citation of that. And we're going to thank them in the credits, but we're unfortunately advised not to by their lawyers. Okay, but TV Tropes, where did you hear that? I want to know so I know I'm not crazy. And you didn't link that anywhere. Come on. I want to I want to be sure so I don't feel crazy. And I searched a long time this morning and I could not find that citation. So, if you guys find out in a news article where they said that, something that's not just a random unsighted TV Tropes page, I would greatly appreciate the clarification. But suffice it to say, when I was talking about Control being SCP with the serial numbers filed off. In my head, what I was saying is that's a good example of it if you were to look at it on its face. If you were going to make an SCP game, but then file the serial numbers off, you can't do better than Control. What I'm not saying is that that's literally what Remedy Games intended to do. I am not saying Remedy Games said, "Ooh, we're going to make a dope-ass SCP game, but we're not going to give them any of the credit or money. That That's not what I meant. They made a great game in their universe of lore with inspirations from us and many other sources combined into a sweet sweet ball of deliciousness, which also, while researching this, I discovered that the sequel is coming out in 2 weeks. Uh I am seated. I will be there. Looking forward to it. And it's important to remember as a community how close you can thread the line of this filing off the serial numbers when it comes to SCP or any creative community. And this I'm going to cite directly from the SCP Wiki's Licensing Guide. The first question in the frequently asked questions of the Licensing Guide, listen closely. I've got a great idea for an SCP web series or movie or restaurant franchise and I need have I need to have someone to lift the Creative Commons restrictions. Can I contact the senior staff and ask them to lift it for me? No. The staff of the SCP Wiki act as custodians of the community and the site as a whole. The staff will not and cannot suspend the Creative Commons license for any reason whatsoever. However, an author can release their original idea, which may have been written as an SCP, under a different license for someone to use, but the article itself will still be covered under Creative Commons. Furthermore, the idea of the SCP Foundation, SCP documentation, and all the all other aspects of the SCP universe are Creative Commons and cannot be unreleased. This means that SCP author Dr. Gears Dr. Gears, for example, can sell the copyright to his original idea, big lizard that hates people and regenerates a lot. However, he cannot sell the copyright to SCP 682 because the idea of SCP 682, the SCP Foundation, etc., has already been released under Creative Commons. And even if he sells the copyright to big lizard, SCP 682 will continue to work under Creative Commons. And in the last year, we have had the example of this happening, which is Quantum's There Is No Antimemetics Division. There Is No Antimemetics Division was an SCP series of tales combined into a book that was self-published by Quantum. And then, Quantum got a book deal on the second release of this book if and only if all of the Creative Commons parts of it were stripped out. And so, all references to the SCP Foundation were stripped to make it copyrightable, to make it so that they could book deal that. And again, we're not hating on that because Quantum, get your bag. Go, fam. This is just an educational example about how this has already been done in the community and how it could be done in the future, whether it's by us or by someone else. Now, I will say that was Quantum remaking their own idea and un-creative-commons-ifying it, but selling the book rights to a publisher. It hasn't been done where someone's come in from the outside and completely un-creative-commons'd it, or at least not that I know of. Well, the VHS team, of whomst all of this conversation is based upon in the first place, in one of the more recent VHS films, they had a off-brand version of an SCP story. SCP 2107, codenamed Got Diet Ghost, is an anomalous soft drink. It is an SCP. It is creative commons. Everything that comes with that. The VHS franchise made a haunted soda short of their own, Diet Fantasma. From VHS Halloween 2025 is a segment for a Diet Fantasma, which sounds a lot like Diet Ghost. I have heard, I have not seen this myself, that it's a similarity that makes people think that SCP is already on the minds of the VHS film crew. I've said that in the past just because Diet Ghost Diet Ghost and Diet Fantasma is so close. Long story short, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know the legality here. I am seeing all these connections and I'm trying to put them get it together and trying to not but but but my best ability, trying to not confuse the issue even worse. Uh, the future will decide if I've done a good job of that or not. So, yes, that was a rabbit hole I went down today, just making sure I got my story straight-ish, and to answer the people in the comments, no, I don't think SCP was ripped off by Control. I think it inspired it, which was already said by the people who made it. Now, if it were a filed serial numbered off thing for real, wouldn't be shocked. I'm not saying I think that's the case. I'm saying it wouldn't be a shocking thing because it's so similar in a manner that I mean, again, nostalgia for a place I'd never been. It was crazy. I'm not saying Remedy did anything wrong. I'm not saying they ripped off SCP. But I'm saying if they did rip off SCP, that would be a pretty good example of it for that segment of the game. Not including the other influences and the creativity and all that. Hopefully you get me. I think you get me. You probably get me.