If you’ve been following along with Call Of Duty lately, you’re no stranger to seeing skins that remind of something you’ve seen before, be it John McClain from Die Hard or Ghostface from Scream. A recent, very adorable, very fluffy skin, however, is looking all too familiar to one artist, and they’re now accusing the publisher of plagiarism.
The doggy skin was first shown off this week in a patch note update for Season Four of Call Of Duty: Warzone. The post details some celebrity appearances, such as the Terminators from Terminator 1 and 2 as well the adorable samoyed dog skin that bears a dramatically striking resemblance to a design originally uploaded to ArtStation two years ago from concept artist Sail Lin. Today, concept artist Sail Lin has taken to Twitter and their own ArtStation page to make accusations of plagiarism against Activision Blizzard.
In a statement to Kotaku, Sail Lin has said: “Activision hasn’t contacted me. I didn’t know anything about this skin before it was announced.”
Kotaku has reached out to Activision for comment.
“Hello everyone, I am saillin, I am the original artist that the upcoming COD VANGUARD Samoyed skin was plagiarized from,” reads the post on ArtStation accusing the Call Of Duty publisher of plagiarism. It continues:
I only just found out at the time of the announcement that my work was plagiarized. Even though I am also a COD player, I am very disappointed to see my work being plagiarized by a big company like Activision in this way. I have reached out to Activision for an explanation and/or compensation, and hopefully the situation will be settled soon. As an individual artist, I can only do so much, and I have to speak out about this to stop things like this happening again in the future.
The post then provides both the original art, as well as screenshots of a video titled the “Floof Fury Tracer Pack – Heroic Loyal Samoyed Kim Tae Young Skin – Season 4 Reloaded.” A video with this title cannot be found on the official Call Of Duty YouTube channel, though it is viewable from a few other CoD fan channels.
Like the video showing off the skin in question, the original post from Raven regarding the skin and the rest of the updates cannot be found outside of the WayBack Machine, as noted by Polygon. The current version is dated July 28 (one day after the original) and no longer shows the fluffy boy that Sail Lin claims was stolen from him, just Arnold Schwarzenager pointing a gun off in the distance while sitting atop a motorcycle. Wasn’t this series about realizing historical battles once?
The original art in question, titled “SAMOYE MEDICAL” on Sail Lin’s ArtStation page is one of a series of anthropomorphised animals outfitted with military hardware, seemingly titled “The Monster Army.” I have to say, if there was more of this kinda stuff, I’d probably play Call Of Duty more often—but not if it’s potentially at the expense of artists.
Update 7/30/22, 1:04 p.m. ET: the story has been updated to include statements from the artist.