The First Descendant Dev Nexon Promises to Change Controversial Icons After Destiny Plagiarism Accusations

ign.com:

The developer of looter shooter The First Descendant has said it will change the icons in the game after it was accused of copying Bungie’s Destiny 2.

The First Descendant, a free-to-play shooter from Korean games company Nexon currently blowing up on Steam, was accused of using “barely-changed” Destiny 2 icons soon after release. Forbes pointed to the remarkable similarities between icons used by developer Bungie for its veteran looter shooter and those used by Nexon for its new looter shooter challenger.

‘The First Descendant’ Is Using Barely-Changed ‘Destiny 2’ Icons via @forbes https://t.co/rGdbfKNfJX pic.twitter.com/gGKfoTkLk9

Amid the accusations, one Bungie icon artist tweeted to say it “feels like a great day to mention that Bungie icon artists are a super-crew of talented folks with original ideas and sharp instincts.”

Fans subsequently unearthed evidence to suggest the root of the problem might have been an icon database called Iconduck that features a Destiny Icons set that includes 204 icons, all supposedly open sourced with a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license. “All icons can be used for personal and commercial purposes,” Iconduck claims on its website.

The designer of the icon set explained that most of the icons in the set were “ripped from the font files created by Bungie and its designers.” At the time, fans speculated that Nexon might have used these Destiny icons from Iconduck and tweaked them slightly for The First Descendant.

In a statement issued to IGN, Nexon failed to explain the process it used for the icons in question, but did admit that Destiny 2 “served as an inspiration during the development process” and promised to make changes.

Here’s Nexon’s statement in full:

Generally speaking, The First Descendant is a mash-up of mechanics from various looter shooters already in the market. There’s more than a whiff of Destiny about The First Descendant’s design, systems, and mechanics, but then there’s also a lot of Warframe about it, too.

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