Call of Duty pulls dog-headed DLC skin after plagiarism accusation

destructoid.com:

Activision Blizzard has quietly pulled a new DLC skin from its billion-dollar shooters Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone following accusations of plagiarism from an online artist.

The “Loyal Samoyed” skin is a bizarre conception that features a realistically depicted head of a Samoyed breed canine plastered on the body of a heavily armed mercenary. The strange look is part of a new range of in-game skins just released for Vanguard and Warzone — a pack that also includes looks stylized after characters from movies The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

However, artist and Call of Duty fan Sail Lin has expressed their disappointment, given that the Loyal Samoyed skin is, almost indisputably, pulled from Lin’s portfolio of animal-based Call of Duty characters. The series, known as “Monster Army”, features a Samoyed-based medic, who is depicted wearing almost the exact same gear as the new Call of Duty DLC skin — close enough to almost be 1:1.

“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,” said a dismayed Lin on their ArtStation. “As an individual artist, I can only do so much, and I have to speak out about this to stop things like this [from happening] again in the future.”

Activision Blizzard removed the Loyal Samoyed skin from its storefront yesterday, complete with a clunky apology that neither confirms nor denies that it openly copied the artist’s original design.

“We have the utmost respect for creativity and content creation,” wrote the publisher in a brief statement to Polygon. “We love the Loyal Samoyed, but regrettably we erred in our process and have removed this imagery from the game. We apologize