Call of Duty’s cute Samoyed is “plagiarized,” the artist claims

If you followed with call of Duty Lately, you’re no stranger to seeing skins reminiscent of something you’ve seen before, be it John McClain Die Hard or Ghostface off Scream. However, a recently released very adorable very fluffy skin looks all too familiar to an artist and they are now accusing the publisher of plagiarism.

The dog skin was shown for the first time in a patch note update for Season 4 of this week Call of Duty: Warzone. The post describes some prominent appearances, such as the Terminators terminator 1 and 2 as well as the adorable Samoyed dog skin, which bears a dramatically striking resemblance to a design originally uploaded to ArtStation two years ago by concept artist Sail Lin. Concept artist Sail Lin got to work on it today Twitter and their own ArtStation page allegations of plagiarism against Activision Blizzard.

kotaku has reached out to Sail Lin and Activision for comment.

“Hello everyone, I’m Sailin, I’m the original artist of what’s to come COD-VORGUARD Samoyed skin was plagiarized,” reads the ArtStation post accusing the Call of Duty publisher of plagiarism. It goes on:

I only found out at the time of the announcement that my work was plagiarized. While I am also a COD gamer, I am very disappointed that my work is being plagiarized in this way by a large company like Activision. I have asked Activision for an explanation and/or compensation and I hope that the situation will be resolved soon. As an individual artist, there is only so much I can do, and I must speak out, to ensure that things like this don’t happen again in the future.

The post then includes both the original artwork and screenshots of a video titled 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 site call of Duty YouTube channel although visible from some other CoD fan channels.

Like the video showing the skin in question, Raven’s original post regarding the skin and the rest of the updates cannot be found outside the WayBack machineas noted by polygon. That current version is dated July 28th (a day after the original) and no longer features the fluffy boy Sail Lin claims was stolen from him, but only Arnold Schwarzenager pointing a gun in the distance while he sitting on a motorcycle. Wasn’t that this series? about realizing historical battles one day?

The original artwork in question bears the title “SAMOYE MEDICAL”. Sail Lin’s ArtStation page is one of a series of anthropomorphized animals outfitted with military hardware, apparently titled “The Monster Army”. I have to say if there was more of this stuff I would probably play it call of Duty more often – but not when it might be at the expense of artists.