Call of Duty has had to deal with allegations of plagiarism in recent weeks. A skin for Warzone and Vanguard looked very similar to artist Sail Lin’s work. Now Activision-Blizzard has apologized and admits an error in the internal processes.
Which skin is it? The skin is called “Loyal Samoyed” and is a mega-fluffy human-sized dog – with a gun, of course. In the following video you can see the skin and the bundle:
Actually, the skin should come into play with the current Season 4, but nothing will come of it. Activision has removed all promotional images with the skin and, according to a dataminer, has also deleted the relevant files in the game (via twitter.com).
Here is a picture of Sail Lin’s work:
How did the artist react? On July 29th, Sail Lin posted a picture on Twitter explaining why the skin is pretty clearly stolen.
There are many elements of the work that are alike and it was already clear at this point that this is quite a bold copy. The artwork was released by Sail Lin in late 2021.
Particularly bitter for the Chinese artist: It was not the first incident of plagiarism in his work. As early as December 2021, images of his “Monster Army” series were used by dubious NFT dealers to make money from the stolen work.
NFT is the new trend in gaming, companies are worth billions of dollars – but why?
Even then, the “Loyal Samoyed” skin was already there, which Sail Lin calls “SAMOYE MEDICAL”:
MY WORK https://t.co/xMBk5AEDhc
— saillin (@saillin5) December 1, 2021
How does Activision apologize? Sail Lin tweeted on 8/1/22 that Activision-Blizzard had been in touch (via twitter.com). Over a week later, it turns out that Sail Lin is not at all happy with the way the billionaire company is handling it:
Tweet translation: “It’s not looking good at the moment. My request was that Activision apologize with its official media and explain the situation to me – not a superficial explanation. You’re as arrogant as ever, I’m disappointed.”
A statement from Activision can be found on the US site “Polygon”. It says:
We have the utmost respect for creativity and content creation. We love the Loyal Samoyed, but unfortunately the process went wrong and we removed the image from the game. We apologize for the misstep.
via polygon.com
What does “faulty process” mean? The statement remains vague and can mean many things. For example, someone on the Call of Duty skin team wanted to bring the cute dog to the team as an idea, then went on vacation and the rest of the team thought it was a finished idea – without checking the background.
However, these are pure speculations – from “accident” to “intention” everything is still possible according to the statement on Polygon.
We at MeinMMO also asked Activision for a statement.
An uncomfortable situation for both sides. How do you see the case? Leave a comment with your opinion on the topic.
If you want to know more about the current situation of Call of Duty and the publisher Activision, then have a look here: Activision loses 40% players in 1.5 years – But Call of Duty has the same plan as in 2019 and that changed everything