Following backlash, Activision has pulled the controversial Call of Duty dog skin that became the subject of plagiarism accusations. While it didn’t outright admit to it, the publisher apologized for the “misstep” and has removed all relevant references and imagery from Warzone. The skin blatantly copied the work of artist Sail Lin, who took to Twitter to point out the similarities between his two-year old concept art and Call of Duty’s latest skin.
Artist behind Call of Duty dog skin says Activision has yet to apologize to them
I have to explain this matter, COD Vanguard Samoye skin plagiarism.https://t.co/ltHTSNhEtf #CallofDutyVanguard #COD #Vanguard @Activision pic.twitter.com/OD2M4WNUms
— saillin (@saillin5) July 29, 2022
Lin claims that they have yet to be offered an apology by Activision. The publisher’s mea culpa was actually issued in a statement to Polygon as opposed to the artist whose work was stolen, infuriating them. “My demand is that the official media of Activision formally apologize and explain the situation to me, not a perfunctory explanation,” Lin tweeted. “They were as arrogant as ever, and I was disappointed.”
In a statement to Polygon, Activision simply said that it “erred” in its process. “We have the utmost respect for creativity and content creation,” Activision said. “We love the Loyal Samoyed, but regrettably we erred in our process and have removed this imagery from the game. We apologize for the misstep.”
Worth noting that Activision works with a number of external partners on its games so it’s highly unlikely that a Raven Software employee was involved in lifting Lin’s work. Regardless, it would have been nice for the publisher to apologize to Lin as opposed to a news outlet.
In other news, Forspoken’s latest trailer has turned the game into meme fodder well ahead of launch, and God of War Ragnarok is so big that some devs are “scared” to release their games around its launch.
