If you have followed with Call Of Duty Lately, it’s not uncommon for you to see interfaces reminiscent of things you’ve seen before, maybe John McClain from Die hard or Ghostface from Screaming. However, a recent artist, very lovely, has very smooth skin, looks too familiar to an artist, and they are accusing the publisher of plagiarism.
Dog skins were first introduced this week in the patch notes update for Season Four of Call Of Duty: Warzone. The post details some celebrity appearances, such as the word Terminator Terminator 1 and 2 as well as the lovely samoyed dog skin that bears a resemblance to an original design uploaded to ArtStation two years ago from concept artist Sail Lin. Today, concept artist Sail Lin brought Twitter and their own ArtStation page to bring plagiarism charges against Activision Blizzard.
In a statement to KotakuSailin said: “Activision has not contacted me yet. I knew nothing about this skin type before it was announced.”
Kotaku approached Activision for comment.
“Hello everyone, I’m Saillin, I’m the original artist that’s coming up COD VANGUARD The Samoyed skin was stolen from “,” reads the ArtStation post accusing the Call Of Duty publisher of plagiarism. It continued:
I just found out at the time of the announcement that my work had been plagiarized. Although I am also a COD player, I am very disappointed to see my work being pirated in this way by a large company like Activision. I have reached out to Activision for an explanation and/or compensation and hope the situation will be resolved soon. As an individual artist, there is only so much I can do and I have to speak out about this to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.
The post then provides both the original work, as well as a screenshot of the video titled “Floof Fury Tracer Pack – Heroic Loyal Samoyed Kim Tae Young Skin – Season 4 Reloaded.” The video with this title could not be found on the official site Call Of Duty YouTube channel, although it is viewable from several other CoD fan channels.
Like the skin show video mentioned, the original post from Raven about the skins and the rest of the external updates could not be found. WayBack machineas noted by Polygon. The Current version dated July 28 (one day after the original) and no longer shows the fluffy boy Sail Lin believes was taken from him, just Arnold Schwarzenager pointing a gun from afar while riding on a motorcycle . Isn’t this series about realizing historic battles once in a while?
The original work in question, titled “SAME HEALTH” on Sail Lin’s ArtStation Page is one of a series of anthropomorphized animals armed with military equipment, apparently named the “Monster Army”. I have to say, if there were more things like this, I would probably play Call Of Duty more often — but not if it’s potentially damaging to the artist.
Update 7/30/22, 1:04 p.m. ET: Story has been updated to include statements from the artist.
