A new furry agent from Call of Duty Warzone is at the epicenter of a new controversy with allegations of plagiarism.
The new character, which should be released alongside the Terminator pack, allows purchasing the “Loyal Samoyed” skin – a soldier with a dog’s head.
However, concept artist Sail Lin claims that the character design is a copy of a concept he created over two years ago.
“I am the original artist from which the upcoming CoD Vanguard Samoyed skin was plagiarized,” Lin wrote on Twitter. “Although I am also a CoD player, I am very disappointed to see my work plagiarized by a big company like Activision in this way.”
“I have tried to contact Activision for an explanation and compensation, and I hope the situation will be resolved soon,” he explained. “As an individual artist, I can’t do much, and I have to talk about this to prevent things like this from happening again in the future.”
The artist made his original design, Samoye Medical, available on the ArtStation website in December 2019.
Following these accusations, Raven Software removed all references to the “Loyal Samoyed” skin from its official website. As noted by Polygon, the page where the skin was advertised has been updated to remove images and references to the skin’s design. In addition, Tweets where the skin was promoted, have been removed.
Sail Lin is a conceptual artist from the Shenzen region of China and has a portfolio full of dogs equipped with combat equipment.
This isn’t the first time Activision Blizzard has been accused of plagiarism. In the past, the studio has been sued over a character’s resemblance to the work of a cosplayer.
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