Holy hell that company is so cringe. First the HP fiasco and now this.
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Yikes 
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Yeah - kind of disappointing, but hardly shocking. Still - I thought they’d carry on at least a little better than [ insert Chinese clone MFR here ].
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Yeah if I remember right Apiary and Alexotos were really representing the GMMK Pro in the beginning…
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Well shure they look alike, but it’s not the same colors. So basically it just as alike any other gradient keyset
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Personally I think these are close enough that I don’t have good feelings about it…
But the community waffles on this all the time. Can you own a color way? I think no. It is just weird when some people get a pass, but at the same time we all rake Glorious and Drop over the coals.
Olivia colors have been copied out the wazoo. Hell, Olivia is practically a template these days. Light color alphas, dark color mods…(See Taro, see Mizu, see etc.) I don’t remember any individual designers getting the same pitchforks.
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Ye, were the lynch mob for GMK muted, minimal, Hennessey
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Illegal? Nah, not even close.
Infringing? Not likely.
Unproductive? Very much.
At least for me personally, context is everything here. If it were just the colors in a vacuum I still wouldn’t be excited about it, but I think what people (including myself) are responding negatively to are the specific chain of working with a creator and then selling an almost exact copy of their well-known keyset not long after without even so much as mentioning them.
Does Alexotos own the red-purple-black gradient? Of course not. Is he known for it in the keyboard community? Yes he is. Sure stuff like Olivia is practically a clone staple at this point - and I totally expect lots of that to be going on - but when it comes to US-based companies that attempt to interact with the enthusiast community directly, well - I think it’s fair to hold them to a slightly higher standard.
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Totally. It’s such a weird situation. I always get this “celebrity impersonator” vibe from sets like this.
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hopefully not coming across as pedantic (and this is completely tangential to your point), but just wanted to defend Taro a bit cuz I love the colorway: the GB for Taro R1 predated Olivia R1 by about 2 months!
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I saw yesterday that Novelkeys is doing a PBT taro…Build-A-Bear Q1 Mod Build (ft. Alexotos) - YouTube
Kind of cool. Taro clones have been around for a while… but I am hoping that with Novelkeys on this, the QC will be good.
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Totally agree with this. I think this is some what of a special case… but at the same time what the community/mob gets riled up about and what they don’t doesn’t always make sense to me.
If Glorious said that this color way was another limited time exclusive, people would still be mad, but I bet you would have a lot of people coming to their defense too. They are providing another opportunity to by a rare item.
I think one of the best stories of cloning is when HK Gaming wanted Oblotzky to carry their clone of his keyset design 
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I’m sorry what?
I’ll be in on that for sure!
looks great, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
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I saw this too. I have a suspicion that these are the same Taro clones that are all over Aliexpress. Hopefuly not? Or else we’re gonna have another Cannonkeys NicePBT Sugarplum situation going on.
But honestly? Those aliexpress Taro sets are some of the best ‘clone’ sets I’ve seen.
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