Activision-Blizzard’s free-to-play battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone has been hit with accusations of plagiarism. Again.
These accusations began following the reveal of a new Operator in the game called “Loyal Samoyed”. This character seems to be a soldier with the head of the samoyed breed of dog and is due to launch with the upcoming Terminator bundle.
The claims were made by concept artist Sail Lin; a concept artist from Shenzen, China. They claim that this character allegedly rips off designs they had made more than two years ago.
The artist went on to state that they were disappointed to see their work plagiarized by a big company like Activision, adding that they’ve reached out to the company for an explanation and/or compensation.
Sail Lin also stated that as an individual artist, their scope is limited. Despite this, they seem determined to speak out and try to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
The artist’s original design is called “Samoye Medical” and was uploaded onto the online portfolio website, ArtStation in December 2019.
You can check out their tweet about the alleged plagiarism below:
Following Sail Lin’s plagiarism claim, Raven Software (the developers of the game) have removed the “Loyal Samoyed” skin from its website. Tweets promoting the skin have also ~mysteriously~ disappeared.
Before we conclude, let us all remember that other time CoD: Warzone came under fire (pun intended) for plagiarism.
Back in February 2021, the photographer Clayton Haugen alleged that Activision-Blizzard based the likeness of the Operator Mara on photos of a cosplayer taken to promote another original work.
It caused some ripples at the time but with many such cases, the matter was later settled out of court.
Whether Sail Lin will be contacted or compensated by Activision-Blizzard and/or Raven Software remains to be seen.
Emmen Gaming 