More of a point for discussion, but me and a load of people in my country have found a few stores on our local online sellers, selling PBT knockoffs of popular GMK keysets, but what’s really interesting is that the keycaps are almost exactly the same as Novelkeys PBT BoW and Vaporwave! Same fonts, same stem defects. I have a more depthy review of these here and I feel that it’s only a matter of time (if it hasn’t already) before it reaches the western market in some more accessible form. Granted, these aren’t exact copies because I’m pretty sure they only have one tooling (and so they can’t make japanese sublegends or novelty keys) but the quality of the prints are just, really really good, in my amateur opinion.
But!!! I’m really thinking about what this could mean for the midrange market, especially when this manufacturer starts making their own colorways! I’m kind of excited but also cautiously optimistic about them.
Maybe they revised the tooling for that key, because mine sits very crooked, and when I contacted Mike at NovelKeys about it, he said they were all like that and included a photo of his own set with the same issue. It would be really cool if they did fix that becausee that’s the one thing keeping me from using what would otherwise be one of my favorite sets for its balance of style and durability.
I haven’t seen the Metropolis yet!!! All the Metropolis clones I’ve seen have been very saturated and sub-par in terms of print job! Hahaha. I’m eagerly waiting for a Cafe knockoff tbh
I’m still kind of surprised that we haven’t seen a quality doubleshot PBT custom keycap manufacturer step up yet. Leopold has shown that high quality keycaps are possible, and even these knock off manufacturer’s are coming close.
I actually just ordered one of those metropolis kits on amazon. One of my GMK GBs got delayed and and I have a naked board sitting here, so I figured I’d check out one of the knock offs that are cheap on amazon. Good to hear they’re at least passable quality lol.
I have a hard time agreeing with the colors argument. If they were ripping off the novelties, that would be another story.
Edit: It’s almost like telling some one they can’t sell a red car with black trim, because your ripping off their red car with black trim.
I just don’t see colorways as being novel enough, to hold a claim. I’d say its more akin, to the BS copywriting of melodies in the music industry, because there are only so many possible combinations.
I understand why you do feel that way, but I’m unfortunately part of the niche that wants something like this: the style and aesthetic of something that has way too prohibitive a price for me to partake in.
To me, it’s an unfortunate symptom of a very niche hobby having very little accessibility from beyond budget-tier.
The presence of keycaps like these flaunting a level of quality beyond “just ok” while being quite affordable is exactly what I believe is going to make this hobby more accessible and more popular. I’m extremely excited for the future that these manufacturers begin creating their own custom colorways, after gaining enough traction from creating clones like the ones above. Heck, I’m wondering if there’s a way for me to contact them about it in spite of my inability to speak chinese.
There has been a lot of drama over the years about colorways and copies/clones etc, and imo what it really comes down to is directly copying something someone put a lot of work into when you could riff on it or do something original is just kinda crappy.
If no novelties are copied and especially if the keyset is out of production or has limited compatibility (Looking at you Drop), I see no harm in another manufacture using a colorway, that’s already been done.
IMHO, novelties are the styling / novel parts of a keyset and they deserve protection. The color combinations, that keycaps can be produced in are too limited, due to the available plastics, to be considered novel and should be fair game for any one to use.
FFT: Most car manufactures produce cars, that consist of the same/similar color combinations. The things that sets two cars apart are the styling (the design language of the manufacture) and the materials used.
