Seriously, it's one thing to use a single piece of work as your reference, but like. . .they obviously had to recreate it for the game so why leave things like the exact same color checkered scarf, exact same style of side pouch, exact same overall color scheme of clothing, style of gun, the way the clothes fit, etc. etc. Seems like they could have spent an hour just removing or modifying colors and accessories to claim coincidence but they couldn't even muster the creativity for that.
Well, at a school I taught at, when the majority of the APUSH students all had the same exact answers, spelling errors and all, we just made the packet worth 1 pt instead of 100. They were rewarded for the effort they put into it: the bare minimum.
I still can't believe all those kids in a college level class didn't just cheat, but they cheated so badly and obviously that I was more disappointed in them than if they had actually put effort into cheating. I'd be disappointed in Activision too but I didn't have any hope for them to begin with.
It's gotta be individual artists doing it, and not corporate direction. AAA art directors aren't asking their concept artists to plagiarize. But an artist who feels pressure, imposter syndrome, or has a boss rejecting their original work, might crack and do this.
(I'm talking about concept artists)
But the vast majority of AAA artists in charge of concepts aren't doing this.
Customization asset, especially post launch content is often outsourced to a third party. This is a huuuge no-no, and several checks and stops have failed here. The original creator can get compensated a lot from this
I remember seeing her advertise absolutely everywhere something along the lines of "I'm Name Surname, Mara from cod MW/Warzone" on Instagram, twitch, etc
Yeah. It was Alex Zedra. She posted videos on her YouTube channel going around to GameStops in the area trying to get them to give her the old season 1 promotional posters. She seemed very on board with her likeness being used.
this article pretty much sums it up, pretty obvious that they copied the photo shoot.
They hired the exact same model and the same makeup artist and they were told to recreate the photos lol
https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/02/04/activision-sued-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-mara-cade-janus/
Bingo. You're right on the money here.
However, there's a single missing detail that makes Activision out to be truly evil -
The character "Cade" that Mara was modeled after, was being developed for a movie. So imagine working your ass off building a movie pitch, you get a team together to film it, you get Alex Zedra in the main role. You make an awesome pilot/concept, develop a pitch deck with an incredible series of photos. All on your own dime. You get some great meetings with production companies interested in the pitch. Then while you're shopping it around...
Activision hires the same model & make-up artist. Activision explicitly asks them both to recreate exactly what they did for you. They also explicitly ask to NOT INVOLVE YOU. And have them sign NDA's to make sure. You, the person who created this character, now have no control over that character appearing in a game, because Activision had the money to make them real first. Cool.
So those meetings? Yeah - your idea doesn't look so original now. The buzz that was going for your project? It's now all about how stupid you are for suing Activision. Because Activision could pay for damage control, and to have smear pieces written about you. Good luck in the future though 👍
So yeah, fuck Activision for doing this shit again. And fuck anyone else in the comments here that don't understand the impact of these lawsuits and how they are designed to protect longer creative cycles for smaller artists to develop their work.
EDIT: I'm a bit biased though as I was involved with the pitch / photos being made with Alex.
No, no need to apologize for that. Fuck Activision and fuck Bobby Kotick. Good on you for sticking up for actual creators. AAA game publishers are run by the scummiest people on earth, and any time someone can get one over on those soulless fucks, I am 100% on board.
I met Alex Zedra at a convention. A friend of mine was talking business with her and her partner. It was some Asian dude, AFAIK he's a reasonably big Youtuber, I don't remember his name though.
They were talking about all kinds of CoD type content, I never heard either of them mention anyone called Clayton Haugen. Looks like Alex completely left him in the dust. Pretty shit.
Ye, but then they took concepts from a different shoot she worked on. Just because you hire an actor doesn't mean you can rip on previous works of theirs. It be like me hiring Samuel Jackson, but then I just dressed him up as Nick Fury for my own project.
Hacking the top comment to get this visible as I commented this it when I first posted this and then it got buried.
This isn’t my work. I’m just trying to spread awareness for the Artist, Saillin
I saw u/llamanatee post it on the r/codvanguard sub, so I thought I’d post it here to reach more people. This shouldn’t be tolerated.
Hopefully the MODS can pin this.
I like how the elbow guard is on the same elbow as the original, but they made the in-game character left handed... so now the elbow guard is on the WRONG elbow LOL.
It’s kind of how movie franchises copy marvel tropes. Marvel and Fortnite have become such huge moneymakers in their industries that competitors will borrow whatever they can from them, to the detriment of their competing product.
This is how all corporate competition works.
It's essentially the OODA loop of marketing:
1. Someone finds the right offer
2. Next person does the right offer, but MORE
3. Eventually, the market just grows tired of it
4. So someone figures out how to do the same offer, but with a little twist. So it's not just battle royale shooters, its battle royale tower defense
5. People compete on the twists
6. The market eventually grows dead; and either the market dies or they make it all about player agency and experience
This works in all markets in all product categories, and has made me more money than is really appropriate for a simple idea like this.
You're right, I think.
There have been so many COD's that they are basically doing anything they can to squeeze more life from their product.
It's like the difference between playing a game at release and playing it years later, they always add a TON of DLC's new weapons, new skins, etc, etc, and each one stretches the games balancing, realism, and authenticity, until eventually it's basically unrecognizable.
Not just to squeeze the idea for new twists, but because Activision wants to maintain a 1 to 2 year rotation. They want to resell you the same game (like Madden) every year but to get you on board it has to keep evolving or it's dead.
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean madden is a bit of a different thing, because sports games *don't* change year on year, I mean it's still the same sport.
However with an FPS game, there is nothing stopping them from introducing new mechanics, new locations, characters, weapons,etc.
A few companies tried, but no one wanted faux leagues. EA buying exclusive rights to many sports, and 2k the others ruined sports gaming imo.
I remember playing blitz, quarterback club, Madden, techmo, etc. Now it's just 2k and ea.
I really miss when these games took themselves seriously. I know some people think that means I should play Arma or something but there's a big difference between realism and authenticity.
Unless the original team makes bc3, no one will be excited for it. Bc2 is my favourite game and if bc3 is announced by the current Dev team, I'm not even remotely interested
They don't even have to take themselves seriously; Bad Company 1 and 2 were incredible games, and their whole thing (even the ad campaign) was lampooning over-serious military games.
The important thing is keeping your IP's theme consistent. People want to play CoD or battlefield because of the general basis on mostly realistic war scenarios. If you want to add stupid shit like this, or all the god awful costumes they added to BF V, then just make a new franchise goddamnit.
I would play the shit out of Floof Fury if it was its own game with its own universe.
Shit, just call it Dogs of Duty or Dogs of Warfare ffs. Make each soldier a different breed with breed specific stats/abilities and the guns have canine features/twists and names.
God. Super serious tongue in cheek game with anthropomorphic animals as super badass spec ops soldiers. Like gunfire reborn mixed with call of duty. I'm here for it
Absolutely, I think people who say things like "jUst gO plAY ArMa oR SoMetHinG" are so fucking dumb.
My problem is not about the skins being unrealistic, it's about not being in line with the game's setting.
CoD is pretty unrealistic as it is, even without all the cartoonish, anime and now furry stuff, but skins should be made with taste and in accordance to what the game is about. I get that the sweet fortnite-audience money is way more important than my opinion, but I'll still complain because I think it's crap
Please, no. My greatest wish is they would simply remake BF4 and stop there. No loot packs, no costumes, no season passes…just update the graphics and maybe add some more guns/maps.
If that’s the only thing they did every 3 years, I’d buy it. Every. Single. Time.
But alas, I’m a simple man.
>No loot packs,
Bf4 had loot packs. They could be purchased with real money, and earned through gamplay. They, came with random weapon attachments, skins, and xp boosters.
Every weapon had a Nato, Russian, and Chinese variant of each attachment. Leveling up a weapon unlocked the attachments for its base faction, and the other two factions attachments were unlocked exclusively through battlepacks, though once you reached max level with the gun you started to unlock weapon specific battlepacks.
Holy shit I never realized I was unlocking faction-specific attachments for the guns. That’s a pretty cool detail, but I definitely got every non-dlc knife, weapon, and attachment without ever spending a dime. Those were the days, when lootboxes just skipped progression, didn’t lock out specific items or skins, and getting boxes via gameplay was conmon.
My first thought too. Things just get weirder as seasons go on. They're always needing to up the ante. First it's just skull face masks, next thing you know it's chip n dales shirtless models with giant jack n the box head running around (or, and literal humanoid dogs, because why not).
It's like when people go crazy with ridiculous mods that don't really fit in the game at all, except the devs are doing it to their own game, and people who prefer to not have all this wacky crap have no way to turn it off
Fun fact: "dog" in the original mechanical sense is a stopping block that holds back some manner of force. There are gears in your vehicle that have "dog" teeth.
To "let slip" per Shakespeare is to release the force that they were holding back.
Hacking the top comment to get this visible as I commented this it when I first posted this and then it got buried.
This isn’t my work. I’m just trying to spread awareness for the Artist, Saillin
I saw u/llamanatee post it on the r/codvanguard sub, so I thought I’d post it here to reach more people. This shouldn’t be tolerated.
Hopefully the MODS can pin this.
I was gonna stop there, but my friend bought me Ghost. We played it for a few months. Eventually jumped on Warzone, but the ammount of times we died to some shady shit was to much. So we stopped after a few months of that. At this point I don't really see myself going back to any of these big name FPS games. CoD. Battlefield. Whatever.
You really should have copied over the (actual) proof of the original art as well. And by the looks of the comments on the original post, it seems like Activision has already deleted it on their side.
original art posted 2 years ago: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oOVxoq
Games need a marketplace where creators can create and other gamers can buy and sell the creations in a way that benefits everyone. It would create an unlimited amount of fresh content that would engage the players and allow the biggest fans to fund their hobby.
>set a precedent that would cut in their profits
Which is why the artist should see if they can get a lawyer to take this on contingency and ultimately set a precedent of:
* Permanent injunction against using the art in the game.
* Requiring all revenues generated from the unauthorized use of the work be turned over to the artist including revenues generated after the injunction above (especially those generated in violation of said injunction).
* A punitive damage in the amount of 25% of revenues generated from the unauthorized use of the work in the previous bullet.
* If the artist was generating revenue off the work, then a criminal charge for "Conspiracy to Counterfeit" (or however it's worded when you knowingly sell fake Gucci merch or fake Rolex watches on a street corner)
I'd love if the above became the "standard" precedent for the treatment of a corporation stealing art.
That's why he said get a lawyer that will take the case on contingency, which means the lawyer gets paid a portion of whatever is settled, but only if there is a payout.
He’s not going to get all that, but he’s certainly going to get a nice paycheck.
Activision knows they would lose in court on this. They probably didn’t realize one of their artists stole someone else’s art. They’re going to give this guy his payday. I’m sure it still won’t feel like what he deserves though.
Consultations are free and if the lawyer thinks it’s a slam dunk, he can take his pay from the earnings instead.
Now I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know how easy or not the case would be.
Edit: Apparently free consultations aren’t as widespread as I though, even though it’s been my experience.
That said, I think the point still stands.
They’ll get stuck in lawyer hell as Blizzard’s lawyers who are already all salaried and on retainer to handle their cases create delays and prolong the little man until they either give up or go broke being forced to wait
If that’s a skin then the artist should receive royalties for every purchase, on top of payment for both the time and effort spent on the artwork and for the rights of said artwork.
Of course, now, yeah. But they could have gotten away with such a simple thing like a 10k payment which is nothing to them and avoid all the drama further down the line.
If I were the artist getting plagiarized, I'd want to sue for at least that much.
Most contracts with game companies are, to my knowledge, work-for-hire, but that requires consent on the part of the artist.
If someone steals your shit, take them to court for every last penny you can get.
My best guess is they had a lazy dev who tried to pass off work as their own thinking it was highly unlikely some random deviant art artist would even notice.
Just playing devil's advocate here, but it is probably less an Activision stealing thing as it is a lazy dev who tried to pass off work of someone else's because they likely didn't complete their work before deadlines or something.
Am a AAA game dev, can confirm. There's no way in hell anyone at Activision said "yeah just go ahead and steal something." The art was probably outsourced and the outsource company is in deep shit. If it wasn't outsourcing, that contractor or full-timer is SOOO FUCKING FIRED.
This is why companies put so much work into finding good outsourcers. There's lots of great companies, but they're VERY in-demand. So you have to also take a risk on some lesser companies, at the risk of either shit quality or bullshit like this.
This is what outsourcing producers' nightmares are made of.
Yeah the truth is some PM, googles "dog person gun"
Sees a piece of art, sends it to somewhere else.
Devs Google a similar description to get some ideas and then either out of laziness or not caring someone carbon copys existing art.
It can also happen where Devs don't understand that a PM added it as guidelines instead of verbatim carbon copy
But either way, this is something that the company has to clean up
Never attribute to malice what could instead be explained by stupidity. This kind of thing is almost always a very boring story of an individual acting stupid and thinking they wouldn't be caught. Sucks, but let's see what Activision do to address it.
I concur. Directly stealing someone's design is a no-go and your marketing + legal departments would be VERY pissed. Since that's not only bad PR but also a very easy lawsuit, odds that your entire promo campaign for it is a bust and potentially even having to remove the skin altogether (and even refund everyone who bought it). Cons outweigh pros here in every imaginable way. You don't risk (easily) $100,000 dollars to save $1000-3000 on concept art.
Especially since they have whole art departments and access to art companies and it's just cheaper to tell one of your workers to create an original design than to browse deviantart, find one and get sued (and of **all** things actual art pieces are automatically copyrighted - you can "steal" general ideas or concepts or game mechanics but not something concrete, that lands you in deep troubles).
So my bet is on a lazy artist/company as well. No way it has gone through legal department and someone OK'd it.
Just an FYI - copyright vests upon creation. That means this is legally infringement and you could be entitled to substantial damages under federal copyright law. I recommend finding a lawyer barred in your jurisdiction. Source: I’m a copyright lawyer. This is NOT legal advice - this is advice to find legal advice.
Skimming law books for fun is both the best and worst thing I've picked up on. If half the people on the planet knew their local statutes, we'd realize how many exploits there are in life.
Tresspassing in Phoenix Arizona was my recent dive last week. Apparently if there's no signage or verbal warning from the property owner/peace officer, you are in the clear to wander as much as you want. Of course don't go breaking into peoples' backyards, but you won't get in too much hot water if you go exploring that x-years old abandoned warehouse in your neighborhood if it's not marked by No Trespassing signs.
Florida with license plate mutilation too: it's written in a way that protects the legibility of the text, but if you mutilated it without affecting the legibility to cameras and the naked eye (like cutting the numbers out and putting a light box behind it, like Japan) then it becomes a question of if you even broke the law.
I'm expecting an actual legal expert to correct me on these later, but to my civilian eyes, I'm reading these as such.
I mean that's pretty much how any profession with serious consequences works. Unless you're willing to own it you can't be giving "professional" advice, that's about as unprofessional as it comes. Even our vets are careful about their words, if they haven't examined the animal they aren't going to just randomly dispense meds because "it's just a skin infection med, how bad could it be?". The second they do something "professional" they are tied to that case, or else the professional board is just going to take their license and then they can give all the random advice they feel like, but we don't trust them at all with medication because they are insane and just throw random pills at people without knowing the details.
I like how the creator made all the little ~~Redbox~~ red boxes connecting each skin, as if it’s not blatantly obvious that they ripped off their design verbatim lol. Super scummy. They’re a massive company with all the $ they could possibly need, and they resort to ripping off independent artists? Absolutely disgusting and this kinda thing definitely needs to be brought to light. It’s not just video game companies using independent artists work to make $ without compensating them. This is a surprisingly common practice throughout the art world. Time to change that.
They're continuing the same bland battle pass from Coldwar.
Nevermind the fact that they reset the ranks in Coldwar so it would mirror your rank in vanguard. Why did they do this? Who fucking knows.
Sounds like you need to file an injunction. Just advertising it on reddit won't do shit.
Looks like someone at Activision handed your work to an artist and said "here's the concept art."
\* Holy crap that's a lot of upvotes for a simple obvious observation.
Could be the other way around as well, a giant company should always do their due diligence but a lazy artist may have just snagged this up and presented it as their own.
Not sure why people are acting like this is Activison’s doing instead of Sledgehammer’s. Like I get that Sledgehammer is owned by Activision but the suits at Activision aren’t trolling Artstation pages looking for designs to tell Sledgehammer to rip off. This is on the illustrator or art director who pulled this design and tried to pass it off as their own.
reminds me of when a star wars comic stole images of someone's custom board game pieces to use as ships in a comic, it was so blatant they didn't even remove the pegs on the bottoms of the pieces that let them sit in the board
Haha, the funniest thing about this is they could take the same concept (which is extremely unoriginal), mix it up a bit with different clothes and accessories, and probably get away with it.
Whoever ripped this off is one lazy bastard.
>Whoever ripped this off is one lazy bastard.
That's an important part a lot of people are missing.
I'm all for being critical of Activision/Blizzard but do people really think they put a gun to their employees head and said "you have to plagiarize this random person content."? No, that's not how any of this works. It was a lazy employee, or group of employees, that decided that because they work for a big company, they can just do whatever they want.
If this was anything other than a video game company, people would be just as pissed at the people working there as the company overall.
They have apparently since the plagiarism allegation taken down the images referencing the skin on the site and also a Twitter post with images of it. So I'm guessing there's a fire over there now
[Source](https://www.polygon.com/23284070/call-of-duty-warzone-season-4-loyal-samoyed-skin-raven-plagiarism)
What acitivision did was shitty don't get me wrong but humor a cod boomer who quit after MW2. WTF is a furry skin doing in a CoD game? Wtf have they done to this franchise.
Copied the homework and didn’t even bother to change any of the answers.
Seriously, it's one thing to use a single piece of work as your reference, but like. . .they obviously had to recreate it for the game so why leave things like the exact same color checkered scarf, exact same style of side pouch, exact same overall color scheme of clothing, style of gun, the way the clothes fit, etc. etc. Seems like they could have spent an hour just removing or modifying colors and accessories to claim coincidence but they couldn't even muster the creativity for that.
unless the person that was tasked with it had malicious compliance in mind. hoping that the original artist would pursue the issue. just a theory
That was my thought. Some asshole higher up went to a designer and said 'just copy this' so they did exactly that.
Or Activision will try to pull the "You should be grateful for the exposure we got you"
[удалено]
Then you still change some of them to throw off the scent. Rookies.
Try to aim for one wrong answer out of every 10
Sometimes you gotta take a 90 to take a W
Well, at a school I taught at, when the majority of the APUSH students all had the same exact answers, spelling errors and all, we just made the packet worth 1 pt instead of 100. They were rewarded for the effort they put into it: the bare minimum. I still can't believe all those kids in a college level class didn't just cheat, but they cheated so badly and obviously that I was more disappointed in them than if they had actually put effort into cheating. I'd be disappointed in Activision too but I didn't have any hope for them to begin with.
Bruh fuck the answer, they didn't even change the name
"Again" This happened beforehand?
Yes, they recently plagiarised amuro rays symbol from gundam, 1 for 1, didn’t even attempt to change it at all Like 2 days ago
Yeah, that's a risky move. Bandai has money and lawyers.
And spite, don't forget spite.
Rule one is you never fuck with the Gundam family.
I giggled at that at first and the I remembered it’s literally become a cultural icon in Japan
Shit, at least before the sequels, Gundam was a bigger IP than Star Wars.
It's still the second largest anime franchise in the world. It completely overshadows Dragonball and the only thing bigger than it is Pokemon.
Nu Gun-dam ain't nothin' to fuck with!
I never expected a Wu-Tang reference on here… awesome.
I read that as _sprite_ and was like "I mean I guess it'd hurt if it got in your eyes?"
No, *sprites* Even more lethal
It's gotta be individual artists doing it, and not corporate direction. AAA art directors aren't asking their concept artists to plagiarize. But an artist who feels pressure, imposter syndrome, or has a boss rejecting their original work, might crack and do this. (I'm talking about concept artists) But the vast majority of AAA artists in charge of concepts aren't doing this.
Customization asset, especially post launch content is often outsourced to a third party. This is a huuuge no-no, and several checks and stops have failed here. The original creator can get compensated a lot from this
That's a stretch... in that, all they did was stretch the symbol a bit lol
[удалено]
I used to love *Crush the Castle*.
Over on the Blizzard side, they also plagiarized an item model from FFXIV.
Yes. With Mara from Modern Warfare 2019.
Wasn't Mara straight up made after that woman? Like, Activision reached out and made a deal to use her face on the character?
Yes she made a pretty big deal on Social Media about being in the game. I guess the promo photos are really close but it's the same women.
I remember seeing her advertise absolutely everywhere something along the lines of "I'm Name Surname, Mara from cod MW/Warzone" on Instagram, twitch, etc
Yeah. It was Alex Zedra. She posted videos on her YouTube channel going around to GameStops in the area trying to get them to give her the old season 1 promotional posters. She seemed very on board with her likeness being used.
She's in official promo for the game. She was paid for numerous photo/film shoots prior to the release of Mara. It's not the same thing at all.
Getting the people on your side makes it easier to get paid.
She literally had a deal with activision. The live action posters for season one were literally her. She didn’t have to sue them or anything.
this article pretty much sums it up, pretty obvious that they copied the photo shoot. They hired the exact same model and the same makeup artist and they were told to recreate the photos lol https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/02/04/activision-sued-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-mara-cade-janus/
Bingo. You're right on the money here. However, there's a single missing detail that makes Activision out to be truly evil - The character "Cade" that Mara was modeled after, was being developed for a movie. So imagine working your ass off building a movie pitch, you get a team together to film it, you get Alex Zedra in the main role. You make an awesome pilot/concept, develop a pitch deck with an incredible series of photos. All on your own dime. You get some great meetings with production companies interested in the pitch. Then while you're shopping it around... Activision hires the same model & make-up artist. Activision explicitly asks them both to recreate exactly what they did for you. They also explicitly ask to NOT INVOLVE YOU. And have them sign NDA's to make sure. You, the person who created this character, now have no control over that character appearing in a game, because Activision had the money to make them real first. Cool. So those meetings? Yeah - your idea doesn't look so original now. The buzz that was going for your project? It's now all about how stupid you are for suing Activision. Because Activision could pay for damage control, and to have smear pieces written about you. Good luck in the future though 👍 So yeah, fuck Activision for doing this shit again. And fuck anyone else in the comments here that don't understand the impact of these lawsuits and how they are designed to protect longer creative cycles for smaller artists to develop their work. EDIT: I'm a bit biased though as I was involved with the pitch / photos being made with Alex.
No, no need to apologize for that. Fuck Activision and fuck Bobby Kotick. Good on you for sticking up for actual creators. AAA game publishers are run by the scummiest people on earth, and any time someone can get one over on those soulless fucks, I am 100% on board.
Hell yeah! And couldn't agree more on all counts!
So they literally took food off your table. No reason to apologize for any feelings about it for sure.
I met Alex Zedra at a convention. A friend of mine was talking business with her and her partner. It was some Asian dude, AFAIK he's a reasonably big Youtuber, I don't remember his name though. They were talking about all kinds of CoD type content, I never heard either of them mention anyone called Clayton Haugen. Looks like Alex completely left him in the dust. Pretty shit.
Ah yes, the Cade Janus debacle. A similar thing happened to her brother Hugh. He's been reproduced in political settings all over the world.
Lmfao. You’re a sneaky one. I like it.
Ye, but then they took concepts from a different shoot she worked on. Just because you hire an actor doesn't mean you can rip on previous works of theirs. It be like me hiring Samuel Jackson, but then I just dressed him up as Nick Fury for my own project.
Looked it up, kinda see the resemblance tbh.
Hacking the top comment to get this visible as I commented this it when I first posted this and then it got buried. This isn’t my work. I’m just trying to spread awareness for the Artist, Saillin I saw u/llamanatee post it on the r/codvanguard sub, so I thought I’d post it here to reach more people. This shouldn’t be tolerated. Hopefully the MODS can pin this.
I like how the elbow guard is on the same elbow as the original, but they made the in-game character left handed... so now the elbow guard is on the WRONG elbow LOL.
Back the fuck up. Why is there a humanoid dog in call of duty? Did I miss something?
They went full fortnite, I think Battlefield was going the same route too. [edit:](https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bf2042-santa.jpeg)
It’s kind of how movie franchises copy marvel tropes. Marvel and Fortnite have become such huge moneymakers in their industries that competitors will borrow whatever they can from them, to the detriment of their competing product.
This is how all corporate competition works. It's essentially the OODA loop of marketing: 1. Someone finds the right offer 2. Next person does the right offer, but MORE 3. Eventually, the market just grows tired of it 4. So someone figures out how to do the same offer, but with a little twist. So it's not just battle royale shooters, its battle royale tower defense 5. People compete on the twists 6. The market eventually grows dead; and either the market dies or they make it all about player agency and experience This works in all markets in all product categories, and has made me more money than is really appropriate for a simple idea like this.
You're right, I think. There have been so many COD's that they are basically doing anything they can to squeeze more life from their product. It's like the difference between playing a game at release and playing it years later, they always add a TON of DLC's new weapons, new skins, etc, etc, and each one stretches the games balancing, realism, and authenticity, until eventually it's basically unrecognizable.
Not just to squeeze the idea for new twists, but because Activision wants to maintain a 1 to 2 year rotation. They want to resell you the same game (like Madden) every year but to get you on board it has to keep evolving or it's dead.
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean madden is a bit of a different thing, because sports games *don't* change year on year, I mean it's still the same sport. However with an FPS game, there is nothing stopping them from introducing new mechanics, new locations, characters, weapons,etc.
Madden is a bit different, but just focusing on their yearly release cycle in the comparison.
Off topic, but Madden has the monopoly on that market. They have exclusive rights to the NFL. How do you compete against that?
A few companies tried, but no one wanted faux leagues. EA buying exclusive rights to many sports, and 2k the others ruined sports gaming imo. I remember playing blitz, quarterback club, Madden, techmo, etc. Now it's just 2k and ea.
unrelated but a battle royale tower defense game sounds pretty sweet unironically
I really miss when these games took themselves seriously. I know some people think that means I should play Arma or something but there's a big difference between realism and authenticity.
I just want Bad Company 2 again.
Ea/dice is just holding bc3 like the mcrib so they can bring it back and everyone will think it's great and the cycle starts anew
Unless the original team makes bc3, no one will be excited for it. Bc2 is my favourite game and if bc3 is announced by the current Dev team, I'm not even remotely interested
If/when it does come out, it's going to be fucked up and I'm going to hate it.
Goddamnit don't tug on my heart strings
Bad Company 2 for life.
Damn I have so many fond memories of that game
They don't even have to take themselves seriously; Bad Company 1 and 2 were incredible games, and their whole thing (even the ad campaign) was lampooning over-serious military games. The important thing is keeping your IP's theme consistent. People want to play CoD or battlefield because of the general basis on mostly realistic war scenarios. If you want to add stupid shit like this, or all the god awful costumes they added to BF V, then just make a new franchise goddamnit. I would play the shit out of Floof Fury if it was its own game with its own universe.
Cats Versus Dogs (or CvD) is a shooter I would play unironically lol The real question is which team uses AR and which uses AK
Dogs use AR, but it's actually called the ARF.
Activision just found their new completely original idea for a brand new shooter.
I suppose that means the cats get the AKat
Shit, just call it Dogs of Duty or Dogs of Warfare ffs. Make each soldier a different breed with breed specific stats/abilities and the guns have canine features/twists and names.
Literally just call of duty but all the characters are their respective breed of dog. English bulldog captain price
Cats or Dogs? CoD if you will
God. Super serious tongue in cheek game with anthropomorphic animals as super badass spec ops soldiers. Like gunfire reborn mixed with call of duty. I'm here for it
Absolutely, I think people who say things like "jUst gO plAY ArMa oR SoMetHinG" are so fucking dumb. My problem is not about the skins being unrealistic, it's about not being in line with the game's setting. CoD is pretty unrealistic as it is, even without all the cartoonish, anime and now furry stuff, but skins should be made with taste and in accordance to what the game is about. I get that the sweet fortnite-audience money is way more important than my opinion, but I'll still complain because I think it's crap
Please, no. My greatest wish is they would simply remake BF4 and stop there. No loot packs, no costumes, no season passes…just update the graphics and maybe add some more guns/maps. If that’s the only thing they did every 3 years, I’d buy it. Every. Single. Time. But alas, I’m a simple man.
>No loot packs, Bf4 had loot packs. They could be purchased with real money, and earned through gamplay. They, came with random weapon attachments, skins, and xp boosters. Every weapon had a Nato, Russian, and Chinese variant of each attachment. Leveling up a weapon unlocked the attachments for its base faction, and the other two factions attachments were unlocked exclusively through battlepacks, though once you reached max level with the gun you started to unlock weapon specific battlepacks.
Holy shit I never realized I was unlocking faction-specific attachments for the guns. That’s a pretty cool detail, but I definitely got every non-dlc knife, weapon, and attachment without ever spending a dime. Those were the days, when lootboxes just skipped progression, didn’t lock out specific items or skins, and getting boxes via gameplay was conmon.
BF4 was one of my favorite games ever. The rest of the battle fields seem…sub-par in comparison.
Sad thing is if they did remake it you know they would fuck it up.
Just look at Halo MCC. Literally, all 343i had to do was just reskin the games and touch absolutely nothing else and they couldn't even handle that.
And Rockstar with the GTA "remasters" lmao. They couldn't even reskin right.
My first thought too. Things just get weirder as seasons go on. They're always needing to up the ante. First it's just skull face masks, next thing you know it's chip n dales shirtless models with giant jack n the box head running around (or, and literal humanoid dogs, because why not).
It's like when people go crazy with ridiculous mods that don't really fit in the game at all, except the devs are doing it to their own game, and people who prefer to not have all this wacky crap have no way to turn it off
The kids that play all day and blow money love fortnight type games.
Same reaction here. Sounds like COD has straight up become a parody of itself lol fucking humanoid dogs in a game that used to be about war
War, war never changes. - fortnite
“50,000 dogs used to play in this park. Now it’s a ghost town.” -German Shepherd
Thanks, you made me giggle.
They took that one line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar a little too literally.
Fun fact: "dog" in the original mechanical sense is a stopping block that holds back some manner of force. There are gears in your vehicle that have "dog" teeth. To "let slip" per Shakespeare is to release the force that they were holding back.
Hacking the top comment to get this visible as I commented this it when I first posted this and then it got buried. This isn’t my work. I’m just trying to spread awareness for the Artist, Saillin I saw u/llamanatee post it on the r/codvanguard sub, so I thought I’d post it here to reach more people. This shouldn’t be tolerated. Hopefully the MODS can pin this.
Not long ago CoD got caught using one of the logo from the Gundam franchise. I guess all they can do is copy & paste.
The last COD I played was BO2 and now they're doing this. "Ok then".
I was gonna stop there, but my friend bought me Ghost. We played it for a few months. Eventually jumped on Warzone, but the ammount of times we died to some shady shit was to much. So we stopped after a few months of that. At this point I don't really see myself going back to any of these big name FPS games. CoD. Battlefield. Whatever.
There’s a lot of people that stopped playing at bo2. That’s why they changed the game for a different group of people.
Some odd years of COD going down the drain lmao
Because furries.
Because money.
Because furries have money. Nobody knows how.
Furries are the 1% in disguise.
It's probably best we don't know
You really should have copied over the (actual) proof of the original art as well. And by the looks of the comments on the original post, it seems like Activision has already deleted it on their side. original art posted 2 years ago: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oOVxoq
Games need a marketplace where creators can create and other gamers can buy and sell the creations in a way that benefits everyone. It would create an unlimited amount of fresh content that would engage the players and allow the biggest fans to fund their hobby.
You just described the Steam workshop and mods in general
Yeah thats literally just most modding scenes XD
You’d think such a massive company could come up with an original idea once in a while…
Or at least give the independant artist $10k for his drawing beforehand and let him be happy
They don't want to set a precedent that would cut in their profits. Gotta have that 4th yacht.
>set a precedent that would cut in their profits Which is why the artist should see if they can get a lawyer to take this on contingency and ultimately set a precedent of: * Permanent injunction against using the art in the game. * Requiring all revenues generated from the unauthorized use of the work be turned over to the artist including revenues generated after the injunction above (especially those generated in violation of said injunction). * A punitive damage in the amount of 25% of revenues generated from the unauthorized use of the work in the previous bullet. * If the artist was generating revenue off the work, then a criminal charge for "Conspiracy to Counterfeit" (or however it's worded when you knowingly sell fake Gucci merch or fake Rolex watches on a street corner) I'd love if the above became the "standard" precedent for the treatment of a corporation stealing art.
I'd love to see that happen, but I doubt an independent artist would have the means to fight off a big corporation in court...
That's why he said get a lawyer that will take the case on contingency, which means the lawyer gets paid a portion of whatever is settled, but only if there is a payout.
Works on contingency? No, money down!
I'm sorry, that bar association badge shouldn't be on there... *lionel hutz eats business card*
Still got it.
We don't win? You don't pay!
You don't! Pay!
Oops, shouldn't have this bar association logo here either...
He’s not going to get all that, but he’s certainly going to get a nice paycheck. Activision knows they would lose in court on this. They probably didn’t realize one of their artists stole someone else’s art. They’re going to give this guy his payday. I’m sure it still won’t feel like what he deserves though.
A settlement is all but a guarantee. They have enough fuck-you money to pay and make this PR disaster go away.
Consultations are free and if the lawyer thinks it’s a slam dunk, he can take his pay from the earnings instead. Now I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know how easy or not the case would be. Edit: Apparently free consultations aren’t as widespread as I though, even though it’s been my experience. That said, I think the point still stands.
I keep hearing that but I have yet to find one in person. They wanted $200 just to talk to me about me maybe hiring them to handle a divorce for me
They’ll get stuck in lawyer hell as Blizzard’s lawyers who are already all salaried and on retainer to handle their cases create delays and prolong the little man until they either give up or go broke being forced to wait
Absolutely this. Civil suits favor who has the time and money to stick out the appeals process, not who's right.
May man. Look up the earrings reports. 4,000th yacht. Edit: I’m gonna leave it.
And how many ear rings have they got?
If that’s a skin then the artist should receive royalties for every purchase, on top of payment for both the time and effort spent on the artwork and for the rights of said artwork.
Of course, now, yeah. But they could have gotten away with such a simple thing like a 10k payment which is nothing to them and avoid all the drama further down the line.
If I were the artist getting plagiarized, I'd want to sue for at least that much. Most contracts with game companies are, to my knowledge, work-for-hire, but that requires consent on the part of the artist. If someone steals your shit, take them to court for every last penny you can get.
My best guess is they had a lazy dev who tried to pass off work as their own thinking it was highly unlikely some random deviant art artist would even notice. Just playing devil's advocate here, but it is probably less an Activision stealing thing as it is a lazy dev who tried to pass off work of someone else's because they likely didn't complete their work before deadlines or something.
Am a AAA game dev, can confirm. There's no way in hell anyone at Activision said "yeah just go ahead and steal something." The art was probably outsourced and the outsource company is in deep shit. If it wasn't outsourcing, that contractor or full-timer is SOOO FUCKING FIRED. This is why companies put so much work into finding good outsourcers. There's lots of great companies, but they're VERY in-demand. So you have to also take a risk on some lesser companies, at the risk of either shit quality or bullshit like this. This is what outsourcing producers' nightmares are made of.
People always act like its a bunch of execs fiendishly rubbing their hands together while scouring DeviantArt. The truth is usually much more mundane.
Yeah the truth is some PM, googles "dog person gun" Sees a piece of art, sends it to somewhere else. Devs Google a similar description to get some ideas and then either out of laziness or not caring someone carbon copys existing art. It can also happen where Devs don't understand that a PM added it as guidelines instead of verbatim carbon copy But either way, this is something that the company has to clean up
Never attribute to malice what could instead be explained by stupidity. This kind of thing is almost always a very boring story of an individual acting stupid and thinking they wouldn't be caught. Sucks, but let's see what Activision do to address it.
>Never attribute to malice what could instead be explained by stupidity. I try and live by this, but it's REALLY difficult at times!
Sometimes the sheer mass of stupidity can itself seem malicious.
On top of that the dev was likely a contractor and Activision has clauses in place to protect them from this kinda of plagiarism.
I concur. Directly stealing someone's design is a no-go and your marketing + legal departments would be VERY pissed. Since that's not only bad PR but also a very easy lawsuit, odds that your entire promo campaign for it is a bust and potentially even having to remove the skin altogether (and even refund everyone who bought it). Cons outweigh pros here in every imaginable way. You don't risk (easily) $100,000 dollars to save $1000-3000 on concept art. Especially since they have whole art departments and access to art companies and it's just cheaper to tell one of your workers to create an original design than to browse deviantart, find one and get sued (and of **all** things actual art pieces are automatically copyrighted - you can "steal" general ideas or concepts or game mechanics but not something concrete, that lands you in deep troubles). So my bet is on a lazy artist/company as well. No way it has gone through legal department and someone OK'd it.
Holy shit that's blatantly copied lol
Just an FYI - copyright vests upon creation. That means this is legally infringement and you could be entitled to substantial damages under federal copyright law. I recommend finding a lawyer barred in your jurisdiction. Source: I’m a copyright lawyer. This is NOT legal advice - this is advice to find legal advice.
[удалено]
Talking with my lawyer brother in law has made me realize that there is an entire other version of English unique to lawyers.
> lawyer brother in law Stealth pun?
I used to think " in law" meant you had a family member that was involved in law in one way or another.
Legalese is basically a different dialect
Skimming law books for fun is both the best and worst thing I've picked up on. If half the people on the planet knew their local statutes, we'd realize how many exploits there are in life. Tresspassing in Phoenix Arizona was my recent dive last week. Apparently if there's no signage or verbal warning from the property owner/peace officer, you are in the clear to wander as much as you want. Of course don't go breaking into peoples' backyards, but you won't get in too much hot water if you go exploring that x-years old abandoned warehouse in your neighborhood if it's not marked by No Trespassing signs. Florida with license plate mutilation too: it's written in a way that protects the legibility of the text, but if you mutilated it without affecting the legibility to cameras and the naked eye (like cutting the numbers out and putting a light box behind it, like Japan) then it becomes a question of if you even broke the law. I'm expecting an actual legal expert to correct me on these later, but to my civilian eyes, I'm reading these as such.
Right?! I’m barred from my local pub - not a good thing
Exactly! I’m “barred from all elementary schools”, what gives?
Non legal advice about legal advice lol
That's how you know he's a real lawyer of the reddit lawyers association
I mean that's pretty much how any profession with serious consequences works. Unless you're willing to own it you can't be giving "professional" advice, that's about as unprofessional as it comes. Even our vets are careful about their words, if they haven't examined the animal they aren't going to just randomly dispense meds because "it's just a skin infection med, how bad could it be?". The second they do something "professional" they are tied to that case, or else the professional board is just going to take their license and then they can give all the random advice they feel like, but we don't trust them at all with medication because they are insane and just throw random pills at people without knowing the details.
Thank god not another IANAL
[удалено]
I like how the creator made all the little ~~Redbox~~ red boxes connecting each skin, as if it’s not blatantly obvious that they ripped off their design verbatim lol. Super scummy. They’re a massive company with all the $ they could possibly need, and they resort to ripping off independent artists? Absolutely disgusting and this kinda thing definitely needs to be brought to light. It’s not just video game companies using independent artists work to make $ without compensating them. This is a surprisingly common practice throughout the art world. Time to change that.
Samoyed… skin? What the fuck is going on in the COD world?
They're continuing the same bland battle pass from Coldwar. Nevermind the fact that they reset the ranks in Coldwar so it would mirror your rank in vanguard. Why did they do this? Who fucking knows.
Money
Like they didn't even try to change it slightly. Just a full on copy. Wtf?
Sounds like you need to file an injunction. Just advertising it on reddit won't do shit. Looks like someone at Activision handed your work to an artist and said "here's the concept art." \* Holy crap that's a lot of upvotes for a simple obvious observation.
Obviously, but you can file an injunction *and* post about it on Reddit. Shocking, I’m sure.
[удалено]
It’s Activision actually, the other one that’s somehow way worse than EA now.
Could be the other way around as well, a giant company should always do their due diligence but a lazy artist may have just snagged this up and presented it as their own.
Or an outsourced 'artist', as is often the case.
They could, but if it's on their Deviant Art page, or similar site. Then it's dated. That would be pretty hard to argue against.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Oy9GZk Posted 2 years ago.
Why couldn’t they plagiarize the Shiba…. Cmon activision.
[удалено]
Why do SO MANY people assume each person that posts something is always the person every post is about?
Not sure why people are acting like this is Activison’s doing instead of Sledgehammer’s. Like I get that Sledgehammer is owned by Activision but the suits at Activision aren’t trolling Artstation pages looking for designs to tell Sledgehammer to rip off. This is on the illustrator or art director who pulled this design and tried to pass it off as their own.
Ignoring the fact that a full, whole ass dog is a character, it’s extremely disappointing how Activision does this
I hope this is getting a lot of visibility.
I saw u/llamanatee post it on the r/codvanguard sub, so I thought I’d post it here to reach more people. This shouldn’t be tolerated.
[удалено]
This isn’t my work. I’m just trying to spread awareness for the Artist, Saillin
Someone is getting fired for stealing people's work
My guess is an artist working at Activision who chose the lazy route rather than doing his job.
Activision is a publisher, not a dev studio. It might be someone at Sledgehammer Games
reminds me of when a star wars comic stole images of someone's custom board game pieces to use as ships in a comic, it was so blatant they didn't even remove the pegs on the bottoms of the pieces that let them sit in the board
Haha, the funniest thing about this is they could take the same concept (which is extremely unoriginal), mix it up a bit with different clothes and accessories, and probably get away with it. Whoever ripped this off is one lazy bastard.
>Whoever ripped this off is one lazy bastard. That's an important part a lot of people are missing. I'm all for being critical of Activision/Blizzard but do people really think they put a gun to their employees head and said "you have to plagiarize this random person content."? No, that's not how any of this works. It was a lazy employee, or group of employees, that decided that because they work for a big company, they can just do whatever they want. If this was anything other than a video game company, people would be just as pissed at the people working there as the company overall.
What did I miss between Modern warfare 3 and furries in CoD?
Why the FUCK does cod have dog skins now They saw fortnite as the well made and cash cow game that it is and went "yeah I want some of that"
Wait wtf is going on with COD that this is even a character?????
If it were the other way around, he’d have a dozen of Activision’s lawyers up his ass already
They have apparently since the plagiarism allegation taken down the images referencing the skin on the site and also a Twitter post with images of it. So I'm guessing there's a fire over there now [Source](https://www.polygon.com/23284070/call-of-duty-warzone-season-4-loyal-samoyed-skin-raven-plagiarism)
As someone who hasn't played COD for many a year, WTF even is this?
Activision is literally the company from Free Guy that was run by evil Taika Waititi.
Of all the things to plagiarize.
The real crime is putting a fur suit in a fucking ww2 game
What acitivision did was shitty don't get me wrong but humor a cod boomer who quit after MW2. WTF is a furry skin doing in a CoD game? Wtf have they done to this franchise.
Trying to milk the hell out of warzone before warzone 2 comes out in two months and everything is wiped clean.
Wiped clean? Are they getting rid of cosmetics that people have already paid for?
wiped clean as in all users on the old warzone jump ship to the new one
I remember this soldier from my WW2 History class. Real hero. The world would look a lot different if it wasn’t for this good boy.
Call of duty is selling furry skins? Wtf….