Call of Duty’s new dog skin was plagiarized, artist claims

Following the latest Call of Duty: Warzone update, an artist has claimed their artwork was plagiarized and was used as a new skin released in the game.

Sail Lin, a Chinese concept artist, tweeted a comparison of their artwork and the newly released “Loyal Samoyed” skin, which resembles a dog belonging to the Samoyed breed costumed with various garments. Lin claims that the skin’s concept art was stolen from the “Samoye Medical” artwork that was posted on ArtStation in December 2019.

“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,” the artist said. “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.”

Lin also pointed out that it wasn’t just the creature that was imitated. Other elements like the scarf pattern and the backpack design are almost the same. The tweet now has almost 8,000 retweets and 30,000 likes, gaining sympathy from fans and accusations of plagiarism against the developer. Activision-Blizzard has yet to provide a statement.

Last week, the latest patch for Warzone brought the big mid-season update to the game. Called “Season 4 Reloaded,” it saw the arrival of the “Rebirth of The Dead” game mode where players can kill zombies on Rebirth Island.